CASTRIES, SAINT LUCIA — Tempo Networks, the leading Caribbean-owned entertainment platform, is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Launched on November 21, 2005, at 8 PM, the network has evolved from a cable channel under MTV Networks into a powerful voice for Caribbean culture, music, and the creative economy.
Founded by Frederick Morton Jr., TEMPO began with a mission to spotlight the vibrant talent and identity of the region. “It’s been 20 years of vibe — that’s the tagline for our 20th anniversary,” Morton said. “We started on November 21st, 2005, at 8 PM. Then the channel was MTV Network channel and then two years later in 2007 we became an independent Caribbean-owned, solely owned network.”
Over two decades, Tempo Networks has earned trust across the Caribbean and diaspora, producing high-energy live events with crowds of up to 20,000, and building an unmatched archive of regional content. “We have created some of the most memorable content in the region,” Morton said. “Events with 15,000–20,000 people in stadiums over the years.”
With growing digital audiences, Tempo has expanded beyond traditional media. “We’re online now with the TEMPO YouTube platform, the social media platform. We have over 1,000,000 followers — in fact more — because we have local Tempo St. Lucia, Tempo Barbados, Tempo Trinidad,” he noted.
But Tempo is more than just entertainment. “At its core, it is a vehicle and a platform to expose all of the amazing attributes of the Caribbean and its people,” said Morton. “We’re vibrant people. Perhaps our region is the most vibrant in the world.”
Tempo is now actively driving conversations around the orange economy, a term used to describe the creative industries that fuel jobs, tourism, and innovation in small island states. “That’s important to move our creative economy forward, the orange economy, to move our artists forward, to move the businesses forward, our industry forward,” Morton emphasized. “It is the future of Caribbean tourism, which is our major industry.”
He added: “So we need to put some fuel in the tank. What kind of fuel we can put in the tank? Creative economy fuel. Remember you heard that here.”
Looking ahead, Tempo Networks promises more groundbreaking content and impact. “It really is a movement. A movement to help us understand that we have something very unique… and if we tap into that energy and send it to the world, our economies grow, our industries grow, and we thrive as a people.”
