Press Release
October 6,
2008
Contact: Paul Benson
(citizenmediaman@gmail.com / 707-668-1632)
For release immediately.
Electronic copy available at http://tvhumboldt.groupsite.com/discussion/topic/show/102898
WHAT:
Launch of revolutionary new online TV channel for Humboldt County.
WHEN:
Beginning 12AM, Friday October 3, and continuing indefinitely.
WHERE:
tvhumboldt.com
The Revolution Will be...
Television
"There’s a high-speed collision going on between the
internet and television," says Paul Benson, of Blue Lake. "More and
more, people are watching internet videos on the same screen where they watch
their soap operas and sitcoms. TV will never be the same again."
Benson is the creator of a new local online TV station
called TV Humboldt, which launched last Friday at tvhumboldt.com.
"The channel aims to turn the old model of TV on it's
head by adapting it to a 'Web 2.0' environment," he says. "Here,
programming is produced mostly by local video artists, not media elites in Hollywood,
New York, and other far-off places."
The channel seeks to interest and amuse a wide Humboldt
County audience with programming touted as "Humboldt's very best homegrown
videos."
Although TV Humboldt is based entirely on the internet, it
looks and behaves a lot like a TV set, explains Benson. "When you turn it
on, it keeps playing till you turn it off. You don't need to navigate from
video to video, and when you click to go full-screen, you can sit back on a
comfy couch across the room and forget you're even looking at a computer
screen. This truly is TV -- just on a different box."
The TV Humboldt platform could be described as a cross
between a traditional commercial TV station, a public-access cable channel, a
site like YouTube, and a site like Myspace. Benson sees the channel as a
demonstration of what's now possible as we move into what he calls a 'media
renaissance.'
"The fact that someone like me, with no background in
computer technology or the media industry, can build a functioning TV station
with global reach, by myself, on a less-than-shoestring budget, makes it pretty
clear that we're in the middle of a major media revolution. Today's
technologies are rapidly leveling the media playing field, and the more we
engage these new possibilities now, while we have the chance, the more free,
fair, diverse, and participatory ‘media as we know it’ will be in the years to
come.”
With this vision in mind, Benson designed TV Humboldt and
its sibling projects to be vehicles to help bring our county’s artists and
communicators together into a highly-networked local community of media-makers.
He believes that as local media people become more interconnected, they can
together turn Humboldt’s potential of becoming a
‘mini-Hollywood' for independent media into a reality.
Feauturing a one-hour loop each week of videos "of, by,
for, and about the People of Humboldt County," the channel officially went
"on the air" last Friday at tvhumboldt.com. A new hour-long loop is
posted each Friday morning, and viewers can tune in any time throughout the
week to watch the current loop. "It's the perfect way to start getting
your feet wet in this dawning age of true internet television," says
Benson, "while 'keeping it local,' and supporting a new decentralized
model of media."
Edited: October 06, 2008 12:49PM
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