World’s First 24 Hour Global Internet TV Plans Launch

A Manchester company is planning to launch what it believes will be the first global live TV channel to set up on the internet in competition with terrestrial TV. Madcowtv.com will begin broadcasting in Autumn, aiming to attract “internet friendly professionals in the 20-35 age group.”

Scheduling is to include a mix of news, sport, celebrity interviews, sci-fi serials, cartoons, game and quiz shows and drama, presented in “bite sized chunks” of ten minutes maximum. The channel will broadcast 24-hours per day on broadband, but programmes will go out in six-hour continuous blocks to coincide with primetime evening viewing in four different time zones – Europe and Africa, the Americas, Australasia and Asia and the Far East/Asia.

No additional technology will be needed to view the channel, as viewers simply log on to the website. A high level of interactivity is planned, with viewers encouraged to send in emails which the team of multi-lingual presenters currently being recruited will deal with on-air. Another planned project seems spookily reminiscent of a certain headline grabbing TV show: A comedy soap is to have an interactive storyline with viewers voting by internet, email or WAP to decide which characters are dumped…

The company, which was set up by entrepreneurs Daniel Lister and Samantha Whitehead, is being funded by Manchester International Airport’s technology fund, Worknorth II. There is also an offer of a seven figure sum subject to match funding. In future the company is to undergo stock market flotation to enable further development. Part of this development will be two new channels, one for sport and one special interest.

Madcowtv.com’s main source of revenue is to be advertising, but it also plans to bring cash in through programme products, merchandising and the sale of its original programmes to digital and terrestrial TV six months after transmission.

Madcowtv.com: www.madcowtv.com