Anthony Doesburg: More TV channels coming to your computer

The trouble with writing about internet TV is getting on with the story - there is so much to see that it's impossible not to be distracted.

Before I could commit that sentence to paper I spent time trout fishing on Lake Tarawera with Geoff Thomas (The Outdoor Channel), saw the Gregory Brothers put America's nightly news to music (Time magazine's website), watched a Kiwi FM Radio Wammo interview with my friend Mark Broatch on his new book (YouTube) and caught a breaking news clip about Sir Howard Morrison's death (tvnz.co.nz).

Not that the news was hard to catch. For an outfit that's already in the TV business, putting video online for viewers to watch at will takes no great imagination.

Magazine and radio stations getting into online video, though - that is a case of old media learning new tricks. Still, these days it's nothing uncommon.

Viewing The Outdoor Show online is something else again. It, with a handful of other local channels, is on a dedicated internet TV service, ziln.co.nz, launched last month.

Mostly, however, internet TV is not a dedicated service, but part of the content on sites of all sorts. That is, if you accept that every bit of video on the web qualifies as TV. Because this kind of content provision, in all its infinite forms, hasn't coalesced into a grown-up industry, definitions are open to debate.

Many of those who have leapt at the chance to put their DIY video on the web, whether to entertain their friends, promote a product or service, or subvert the mainstream media with alternative accounts of current events, would be happy for that informality to continue.

Happily, it doesn't look under threat. A glance at what's around should soon convince anyone that this is a cheerfully anarchic phenomenon that no one is going to succeed in regulating, any more than it would be possible to block the web's millions of blogs.

The only thing holding it back is the perennial bandwidth problem. Oh, and for those trying to make a living from it, finding a way to get us to pay.

One way, says Ziln director Paul Brennan, is to be an internet TV infrastructure provider, the role Ziln is hoping to fulfil. For $40,000 a year the company will let you become a channel owner by selling you a slice of its video streaming server.

If that sounds costly, Brennan points out that a Freeview digital TV channel will set you back about $500,000, if there happens to be an available frequency. He contends that today's unsustainable TV model - proof of which is the $25 million budget cut inflicted on TVNZ this year - will be supplanted by internet TV as bandwidth improves.

"What that means is we'll be able to add lots and lots of specifically targeted content genres which just aren't viable at present."

Every magazine has the potential to be an internet TV channel, along the lines of Trends TV, one of Ziln's customers, an extension of the print publication.

The existing system is also ineffective at giving advertisers what they want, according to Brennan, who can claim to know something about that issue, having made over 1300 TV commercials.

"If I'm sitting in front of the television and a commercial comes on, I'm passively watching it. In this new environment we can drive people to act ... with vouchers, with offers that can be sent to their cellphone for loyalty points just for watching.

"I think that business model is what is going to fund the internet delivery of TV in the future."

Those turning to the web to get away from television advertising should find the short-duration internet TV variety less intrusive, says Brennan, who is a part-time newsreader on ad-free Radio New Zealand National when he's not an aspiring internet TV mogul.

With a modest 1200 site visitors a day, Ziln expects to be making money in about six months. But its goals aren't exclusively commercial.

Brennan says the country is brimming with TV production talent that ratings-driven TVNZ is ignoring. Likewise, TVNZ is falling down as a public broadcaster by airing only limited interview-style current affairs programmes. Ziln sees itself stepping into the breach.

"That's what this country is lacking and it's what we're passionate about."

For this viewer, enthusiasm is reserved for originality - what surprises, informs and uplifts. During the writing of this column, the Gregory Brothers was most memorable, not the recycled content of old media. Commercialising internet TV might pay the bills, but I'd have no great hopes of it doing much for the content.

Now screening

Among its offerings, Ziln's menu includes:

* Al Jazeera
* Bloomberg TV
* Voice of America
* The Outdoor Channel
* Trends TV
* Archives NZ
* HotScience
* The Shopping Channel