BEyONdTV - funding

This is an on-line alternative TV project which departs radically from previous attempts in this field, solving the problems which have frustrated these projects so far. The “BeyONdTV” project will provide half-an-hour of high-quality radical grassroots news to the computers of viewers every day. It will be an internet TV project which succeeds both in terms of quality of production and reliability of delivery. It will fill a very important gap by providing daily stories and angles on stories not covered by the corporate global media. As a result it will be an important contribution to media democracy, and democracy overall, worldwide.

Internet TV projects are currently unsuccessful for two reasons:

Firstly, the method of delivery. Until now, on-line TV has required an active choice by the viewer - the decision to download. A website must be located and logged onto, and a selection made by each viewer of which films to download, with no security as to the quality of the video downloaded. This is a major obstacle to viewer take-up. The success of “BEyONdTV” will be based on its mirroring of the passivity of broadcast TV. The daily news programme will be just one mouse-click away, from an application sitting on your desktop. The day's programme will be downloaded to you without your having to remember to request it. In this sense it is just like switching on the television. The technology allowing such fast and reliable automated download has only recently become available, via bittorrents swarms. Previously, video download via
peer-to-peer networks was frustratingly slow for the majority of internet users. Bittorrents technology solves this by providing rapid simultaneous download between subscribers at many times the speed of peer-to-peer download from a single source. Our software application for delivering the TV to your desktop will be a small, easily-downloadable file. It will be designed specifically for the delivery of BEyONdTV. Registration will be free. The daily package received by viewers will be a pre-selected high-quality news resource which the subscriber will be able to trust.

The second problem defeating alternative media projects is the variable quality of much of the video produced. Too many alt-media projects are technical in their focus, dealing with the delivery mechanism, but not with the content.

There are two reasons for the lack of quality in alternative films. Firstly, the technology is very widely available, but training in video-making in no way matches this availability. There is a huge shortage of appropriate training for video activists at no or reasonable cost. What training exists tends to emphasise narrowly technical aspects rather than the craft of film-making. As a team we are uniquely able to solve this problem. We will provide this training on a global level, and the free materials for its dissemination. The second reason for the failure of quality is the "open-posting" nature of much alternative video. The BEyONdTV project will be editorially controlled at the centre on a daily basis, so that quality is filtered.

We will promote the channel through our already-existing contacts with radical video producers worldwide, to build active production networks. We will be offering to these film makers an effective form of distribution to a large number of subscribers, under "creative commons licence". In addition to the news programme, an hour of documentary will be sent out each week, downloadable at screenable quality, which can then be shown off-line via a video projector.

So the BEyONdTV project has three main components:

1. A production house producing daily news segments.
2. A marketing strategy promoting the channel to subscribers and suppliers.
3. An international video training programme.

The aim of sustainability at the end of three years is built into the project.

BEyONdTV will initially be organised centrally to get it going, but decentralization will be rolled out from the start. The huge potential latent in the wide availability of video cameras will be realized by focused training that will enable the production of high-quality films. The network thus produced will facilitate the mushrooming of parallel local networks and channels. Any profit from the sale of footage used in BEyONdTV will be put into an independent production charity to sustain activist production worldwide.

We currently have a pilot of the BEyONdTV news programme in preparation.
Budget
$500,000 over 3 years.

Undercurrents
Founded in 1993, UC has produced an award-winning alternative news magazine, hosts a unique annual video festival, and a media educational programme. Trains hundreds of people to use video as a tool for environmental protection and positive social change.
Nonprofit company no: 2864743 and Reg charity no: 1050704