Sites like YouTube, Blip and  Google Video let you post your video creations online for the world to see. If you’re craving for a little more excitement and want to host your own TV show – or channel even – there are a few sites that will let your dreams come true. With the slow demise of local broadcast TV stations you may want to take matters into your own hands and start your own TV station. Broadcast and even cable TV is expensive and time consuming to startup and to keep running but a web based TV show is easy and cheap to start up thanks to services like Ustream and Livestream.com. All you need is an internet connection, a web cam, a microphone and the most important element – something to say.

Who can make use of a live web TV channel? Citizen journalists, churches, special interest groups, non-profit societies and associations, schools, politicians and government, cultural and ethnic groups, live events such as trade-shows – and the list goes on. Anyone with a message to share, the time to commit and a potential audience, no matter how niche, can make use of these live TV/Video streaming channels.  Traditional media including radio and print are also making use of these channels to increase their reach and audience.

Homer Simpson once said, “Ahh, television . . . it gives us so much and asks for so little in return.” . Not so with a live web based TV channel. Ustream.tv and Livestream.com take TV viewing into the next generation by giving your audience the opportunity to talk back to you and with other members of the audience through a chat channel on the same page as your video. So far the content of the channels vary from awful – bad video, poor sound, questionable content – to high quality broadcast like shows. Livestream lets you save and archive your show for viewing after the live event. It can then be streamed from your website or delivered as a podcast or burned to a DVD and distributed to people who missed the original show.

Check them out and if you start your own web TV channel, let me know and we will link to it here from our blog.

Talk with you later . . .

Dean