Tts wont announce

Ive been fighting with this for days. if anyone can help it would be nice. I dont seem to get anyone to respond to these…

TTS wont annouce the time of my meeting. I can see the sensor it is calling has the data. And even if not other tts announcements that have a sensor not showing anything will just say unknown, here it is just a short pause with out anything about it. I really would like it to say the time, but since i cant figure it out ill take what i get…

cal_start_time:
      value_template: '{{ states.calendar.xxx.attributes.start_time }}'
      friendly_name: 'Next Meeting Start Time'

i can see in the sensor it gets this
sensor.cal_start_time 2017-11-26 18:00:00

the tts
Your first meeting is scheduled for {{ states.calendar.xxx.attributes.cal_start_time }}. The meeting is {{ states.calendar.xxx.attributes.message }}