Just over 11 years ago I registered the domain WorldTV.com. It was the last month of 1995, and YouTube and the citizen journalism phenomenom was just a twinkle in its video sharing mother’s eye.
I remember the evening well – I had just downloaded and installed version 1.0 of Real Audio (later to become Real Player) and using my dial-up modem, had tuned into a radio station from the other side of the Atlantic. It was the first time I ever experienced live streaming audio over the Internet and it caused me to have a bit of a eureka moment…
I figured the only thing preventing live video streaming was bandwidth and computer processing power, two things guaranteed to be solved by the biggest players in the industry.
A year and a half later in May 1997 I wrote…

For the first time in the history of broadcasting, a medium is developing that allows anyone to become a global broadcaster. This medium is the Internet. It is now possible to send real time video over the Internet. The Internet provides the means for distribution and a home computer provides the means for transmission. In many ways what we are seeing is the early days of television all over again. By the year 2000 anyone with a camcorder and home computer will be able to readily publish video on their own website. As time goes by the quality of this video will continually improve and talented videographers will begin to emerge from all corners of the earth.

WorldTV is an (incredibly) long time coming and no one more so than me will be happy for it to finally see the light of day. The business plan has changed a thousand times, its ideas, its proposition, its offering – but its core tenets and beliefs have always stayed the same. Ever since I ran a (pirate) radio station in London in my youth, I’ve always wanted to run a (pirate) TV station, and more so, open up professional style broadcasting to everyone. WorldTV will be the embodiment of that long standing desire, and it can’t come soon enough!
I’m heading off to a place this morning, to meet up with a group of guys who are going to help make WorldTV happen. I’ll be staying there for two weeks, and at the end of it hope to have some form of rough alpha version running. The plans are almost finalized, and I can’t wait to put them into action.
I will try to post some pictures and/or video of my trip – it should be an interesting one. With the congestion charge coming to my doorstep in London this morning, I can’t think of a better day to get the heck out of Dodge.