Broadcasting to serve the public interest, must have a soul and a conscience, a burning desire to excel, as well as to sell; the urge to build the character, citizenship and intellectual stature of people, as well as to expand the gross national product. — Newton Minow
Wi-Fi TV, which provides over 300 channels of live TV programming that can be received over DSL, Cable Modems as well as WiFi networks, has opened a new content and technology business. It enables anyone to program their own global television channel.
“What business (from a high end car dealer to a hotel to a real estate agency), church, school, charity, chamber of commerce, civic group, club or affinity group wouldn’t benefit from its own TV channel viewable both locally, nationally and around the globe,” asked Alex Kanakaris, Chairman of Wi-Fi TV Inc, a company traded on the “pink sheets”.
Benefits of owning your own Wi-Fi TV Channel:
- Ability to place as little or as much programming you want, sequenced in any way you want, on a TV channel that can be seen locally, nationally and globally by anyone with a high-speed Internet connection.
- Ability to stand out in any given area by having your own TV channel, to provide information, instruction, sales data, entertainment, shows, of any kind you wish.
- All that is required to create programming is a inexpensive video camera, anything from a very simple one camera recording to a more elaborate production will work fine for delivery over the Internet.
- Ability to sell advertisements on the channels, or to sell your own products, or to attract customers to your brick and mortar business, or to attract members or subscribers, or to promote what you have to offer.
- Ability to present your viewpoint in any way that you wish, with freedom of speech.
- First channels on any topic become the Wi-Fi TV “default” channels on Wi-Fi TV Topic pages, meaning additional clout and viewership.
- Ability to create a following or cater to your audience in a way that no magazine, newsletter or traditional means of communication can.
- Wi-Fi TV Live Chat will enable viewers to discuss your programs online visible by all viewers.
- Ability to place links to products you have for sale from the Wi-Fi TV product listings on the pages where your Wi-Fi TV Channel is accessible.
- Ability to schedule special events, fundraisers and other special shows.
- Wi-Fi TV Channels can be viewed on PCs, laptop PCs, and, increasingly, on mobile devices, TV screens, and big screen TVs, anywhere a in the world a high-speed Internet connection is present.
Costs of owning a Wi-Fi TV Channel:
- $25,000 one-time upfront fee.
- Cost of encoding programs to WindowsMedia files, estimated to be $20 to $30 per hour of original programming (a one-time fee for each show; for example, if a one hour program airs four times a day, seven days a week, the cost for encoding the program is only a one-time total of $20 to $30).
- $5,000 per month fee; however, this fee can be reduced or eliminated by sharing revenue on products sold over your channel, or sharing in ad revenue generated for your channel, based on the amount of ads sold or products sold. Wi-Fi TV can assist in the selling of ads and product sales generation.
- All programs are “pre-recorded,” additional changes apply for live webasts.
A Wi-Fi TV channel with your name is created, accessible from the Wi-Fi TV home page, along with a Wi-Fi TV Topic page or pages of your choosing, a Wi-Fi TV country page, and a unique URL created for your channel.
Wi-Fi TV covers all bandwidth and hosting costs with joint press releases, usage of the Wi-Fi TV Shopping Cart, the Wi-Fi TV Live Chat feature for your channel, a Wi-Fi TV channel number and opportunities for special web events and promotions through Wi-Fi TV.
The owner of the Wi-Fi TV Channel must provide original or licensed programs, with no minimum or maximum amount. However, the channel owner must provide shows in WindowsMedia format (see Costs above) and sequencing. Channel will be broadcast by Wi-Fi 24 hours a day, 7 days week, but shows can be repeated so that there is no minimum amount of programming required.
WiFi TV might be one way to create a state-wide educational, entertainment or news network.
Independent public broadcaster MHz NETWORKS has launched WORLDVIEW, an internationally diverse 24/7 program stream. Holersoft has a free Internet TV tuner program that allows you to watch some 1200 TV channels from around the world.
Or you could do it yourself. J-Learning has a Newser how-to.
For cellular distribution, the Philadelphia Inquirer partnered with Verve Wireless for their wireless sports news. The NY Times has gone mobile and Google is bringing AdWords to the mobile phone. Wink is people powered while Vidspot hosts mobile videos.
Wireless ISPs might tie into a fiber backbone (like NOANET fiber) or spot beam satellites (like Wildblue). Install 10-20 geographically dispersed servers ($3000 each), to cover your entire state. Bingo!
Then, build your own regional network like MetroTV, or NY-1. Sports events, protests, antique auctions, weddings or live adventures could go global at the drop of a hat.
Or team up with alt weeklies like Red Eye, The Stranger or Popular Podcasters like Portland Bloggers with free classified ads and chat.
A chain of micro-theaters could provide 2-way conferencing as well as a venue for independent cinema.
“Homeland security” could be enhanced with an alternative broadband network tied into your state’s Unified Command Center and Center for Digital Education.
Your neighborhood is ground zero. Google is taking its mission to monetize “all the world’s information” to your neighborhood. Google laid down a local gauntlet today targeting the $10 billion in advertising local businesses are projected to spend online by 2010.
None of this is likely to register with the high command of your state or mine. That’s okay. Since 802.11b began at the grass-roots, it might expand from the grass roots.
NDS’s WiMAX TV solution (pdf) can extend wireless broadband service to deliver TV services to laptops and mobile devices.
The DVB standard opted to support OFDM, rather than single carrier, because of the very dense relay population in Europe. Also it was felt that high definition was not the strong driver that it had been in the USA. However, the scheme does allow for a future upgrade to include HDTV.
The requirement for flexibility in frequency planning and the possibility to trade data-rate against coverage, was built in by requiring different forms of modulation (QPSK, 16QAM and 64QAM) and different code rates to be implemented in the receiver. The DVB spec was agreed in December 1995 and achieved ETSI approval in April 1996. ATSC was adopted by the U.S. FCC on December 24, 1996.
Maybe WiMAX TV will become the future of broadcasting.
Good ideas are unstoppable. Good ideas like yours.
Take charge and move out!
Related DailyWireless articles include Video Editing Coop, Oregon Unwired, Audio Book Sharing, Newspaper Manifesto, CBS Goes Wireless, Remote Ocean Viewer, The New State Television and C-SPAN Celebrates 25.
