Tony sayer here has run radio stations. It is not either massively technically difficult not massively expensive.
As far as something like that channel does, if you can take business plan to potential advertisers, get them to guarantee revenue from adverts, plus some way to insert adverts, get the costs from whoever you pay to put the thing on a MUX, and get a decent broadband that can stream up to the MUX at a few Mbps, then take the whole thing to a bank or what have you for any extra funding needed, ..that is it.
It's simple enough and cheap to set up an Internet streamed radio or TV channel, even I could manage that. I am not sure sure it would be so easy to set up a proper broadcasting TV station.
TV stream is usually MPEG2 - cant remember the audio.Again its not hard with very basic software to split a video up, insert adverts, and resample and rescale it to a tv format.
It is more likely getting the necessary agreements to show very old stuff. Don't assume the BBC have the rights to show anything they ever made in perpetuity.
Feature films are easy. All you need is to pay the appropriate fee.
I believe that is part of the problem. Without the BBC and licence payer money many programmes would not have been made at all but the BBC may only have the rights to show them a limited number of times.
And then there is the BBC censor airbrushing broadcast history in order not to offend the the snowflake generation.
That's what I meant. An old film in a private collection might be 35mm (or possibly 16mm) - but what about all the widescreen formats? Or they might be DVD. If collected years ago they would likely be VHS which is hardly suitable for broadcast.
Are they broadcast with subtitles and/or audio description? That would be another problem.
I'd hope they transmit them in the native ratio. I hate things morphed for widescreen. A decent DOP frames things correctly. Cutting chunks off spoils things for me.
Be a lot of work to add those.
Must admit to never having used Talking Pictures - but have a pal who loves it.
At least *some* of their old films have subtitles, not sure about audio description. And all those I've seen autosize - although most are 4:3 to start with.
This while set-up looks very fishy to me.
With all their guarenteed millions from the Licence Fee the BBC couldn't afford to run BB3 and are forever threatening to shut BBC4. As it is, *most* of the material broadacast on BBC4 is repeats.
A few hours spent watching Talking Pictures TV, shows most of their ads are either Dormeo matresses, mobility aids of various kinds, or charity ads which presuably don't pay anything at all. And their audience, while regular is relatively small from a low spending demographic.
And from this limited income they are able to fimance a TV channel. something the BBC couldn't afford with BBC3, add subtitles to old films and pay licence fees on those they don't own.i.e all the BFI material they show for none. Most of which is also available as BFI DVD's and Blu Rays.
Also this idea that he was able to buy up the broadcasting rights to hundreds of old films for peanuts again sounds a bit fishy to me.
Talking Pictures doesn't have live programs and doesn't have a dozen celebrity presenters each with an inflated salary. There is no inverted pyramid management structure. They don't spend a fortune on inter program promotion of their own channel. It's all very basic. They don't make or commission any new programmes. Subtitles seem to be only on content that had them before - they don't seem to add any themselves.
They sell compilation DVDs - a number of films from the same era or a number of films by a forgotten star etc.
Most of what they show is very dated with possibly the average age of the content being 70 or 80 years. Anyone for a young Sir Bruce Forsyth presenting Sunday Night at the London Palladium showing how bad prime time TV was in the 1950s
A few of the films they show are very watchable but a lot of British comedy films seems to be old music hall performers and acts transferred to the screen with very poor acting and very predictable plot lines. Maybe think of "On the buses" but with the stars being from a previous generation.
What I find most interesting is the change in social attitudes, changes in living conditions and the falsehood of some of the post war propaganda. It's a wonder that the Police solved any crime at the time.
Maybe if a few more people watched the channel they would no longer want the "good old days" back.
The EPG on my set top box links to the the Internet and the IMDB user film reviews. Its interesting to note how some of these self proclaimed film buff critics are far up their own backsides :) Just because a film is old doesn't make it a watchable classic, nor does the 400 word essay on the history of the director or actors.
Neither does BBC4. It shows no live programmes. apart from one half hour slot provided by BBC News. BBC4 has no celebrity presenters nor continuity announcers, whether highly paid or not. Unless you count the likes of Andrew Graham Dixon or Simon Sebag Monifiore as celebrities. God help us.
Talking Pictures TV broadcasts 24/7 whereas BBC4 only starts up at 7.p.m each evening.
They showed a film from the 50's this afternoon with subtitles. In any case if this material already has subtitles, which implies somebody thought it worthwhile at some point then it seems a bit strange that TPTV would be able to buy it all up for peanuts. As I said it simply doesn't add up.
As it happens what this chap is doing is hardly new, in one sense at least. In the 80's Jeremy Isaacs hired Leslie Halliwell, the film buff, who bought the rights to a lot of British classics, Ealing Studios etc, GPO and Crown Film Unit shorts, to be shown on Channel 4. This is before a lot of this material was available on either VHS of latterly DVD.
What is also distinctive about TPTV is that their EPG entries are very informative, on Samsungs at least First up they give the year then the director then one or two stars then a brief synopsis. This is unlike some other channels who ignore all this and simply give a story outline for dribblers.
I watched a pretty dreadful one last week, about a seaside town getting a glamorous actress from France for a promotion event.
I watched it because it was set in *my* town in the 1960s. Very interesting; we moved here in 1978 and within three months the pier (one of the longest in the country) was destroyed by storms. There is a shore end stub, and an isolated bit way out at sea.
It was interesting to see what it looked like, railway track and all. The rest of the town had some good bits too. They didn't show the gasworks that had Aldi built on it, though.
I grew up in another seaside town, and it's interesting to see stuff from there before I was born (although I haven't yet seen the eponymous 'Rock').
From the look of it a cheap film made to cash in on a pop groups current chart success but released delayed for 2 years after they had fallen from favour. Even the producers must have known it was crap.
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.