In January 2008 Community TV Trust signed with Global Digital Broadcast to launch an IPTV platform.
This new technology allowing broadband carried VoD onto your TV set will enable CTVT to offer more video and is likely to be the precursor of a new culture of TV channels.
We’ll all have one.
“Southwark.TV” [www.southwark.tv], principal project of Community TV Trust [CTVT], has started to build its IPTV presence on the Global Digital Broadcast (GDB) platform.
This new technology allows broadband hosted video-on-demand to be viewed on your TV (via a set-top box). Computer and TV merge with this development. The potential for local application is extraordinary … though the riddle of financing such ventures remains.
- Local funding
- Micro advertising
- Local authority support
- Local services taking part/contributing media
- Local volunteering
- Part-time management
These are all options for the running of a local media venture. There is no abiding reason why locally produced media (also known by such ugly appelations as self-generated content, and UGC or user-generated content) should be made to fit into a commercial structure.
Community TV Trust [CTVT] is active in a number of ways:
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- it supports community groups, people young and old including volunteers seeking practical experience, local engagement and enhanced media skills for themselves;
- it will continue to support “Southwark.TV”, its many partner groups and schools (all of whom receive free webspace and support), and promote the local media model that has evolved around this project, ‘The Southwark Template’;
- it offers media training courses tailored to the needs and abilities of individual groups;
- it will continue with its campaigning for broadband-oriented community media funding streams to be created by central Government – these could flow via DCMS (Culture, Media & Sport), Work & Pensions, DCLG (Communities & Local Government);
- it is available for production work, to receive commissions for promotional films, training videos, educational DVDs (it has produced a substantial Knife Crime project with 3 hours of broadcast quality video material, and another project with local Primary School children on Healthy Eating; it will make films of its own; it will support local aspiring filmmakers … one is completing a drama-documentary, “Skippering”, on the homeless and homelessness; it will host film screening events from time to time;
- it will produce broadcast TV programmes for such channels as the Community Channel in the UK.