By Mark Dawes, Staff ReporterLOVE-TV is set to carry broadcasting in Jamaica to new heights with the acquisition of new technology which allows for advanced digitalisation of signals. It is poised to revolutionise the viewing of church events and could become a major facilitator of business conferences and distance learning, says Winston Ridgard, CEO of LOVE-TV.
Speaking with The Gleaner, Mr. Ridgard said, "The service that we are talking about now is an opportunity to route material from anywhere in the island to anywhere that you want to go to, to a centre, an organisation or to an individual's home."
NEW DIGITALISATION SYSTEM AVAILABLE NOW
Mr. Ridgard, a former programmes manager at Radio Jamaica, said: "We have set up a network which allows us to run our regular television programmes, on channel six or on cable systems islandwide, and at the same time offer a special closed circuit individual private transmission of material from anywhere to anywhere to anywhere. A church which is having a convention, for example, and they are having it in a facility which can't hold more than a couple hundred people, can by special arrangement, have that transmitted, to close circuit screens in a location such as the National Arena, and therefore you can seat more people there but the principals can be in Negril and the larger congregation can be meeting there. The same thing would obtain for any gospel shows in the island. You could in fact have a wider audience in a closed circuit location than anywhere else by virtue of this transmission. This new digitalisation system is available right now."
He explains, "It is the digitalisation of a signal. It is a digital network which is routed through a series of computers and its gives studio quality regardless of the extend of the transmission. The National Prayer Vigil which was held on December 8, in Ocho Rios, was transmitted around the island and to a centre in New York."
The technology, Mr. Ridgard further explained, also allows the station to show a movie from its Carlton Avenue studios in Kingston and have it directed to a subscriber cable system in Negril, for example thus only customers of that Negril cable operator would see the movie.
Mr. Ridgard acknowledged that because LOVE-TV has no rights to the digitalisation network technology, it is only a matter of time before other TV stations in Jamaica catch up with it. But it intends to take advantage of the steps by which it is ahead. Earlier this year, Mr. Ridgard said, an information technology conference was held in Kingston and the network was used to route the conference to several tertiary institutions and also to a facility in Italy.
LOVE-TV is owned and operated by the National Religious Media Company (NRMC), an inter-religious by definition, but functionally a Christian entity. LOVE-TV began operations five years ago. LOVE-TV, Mr. Ridgard pointed out, did not start with the same degree of financial support as its radio counterpart did and as a result, it has tended to lag a bit behind. Nevertheless, with this new digitalisation technology, LOVE-TV hopes to make up for the lag.
A GREAT DEMAND
There is tremendous demand for the new service, Mr. Ridgard said. The TV station, he said, is in talks with the University of the West Indies toward using this technology to aid distance education.
Because cable has had significant impact on the viewing audience, the religious TV station sought to get on all the cable systems in the major population centres in the island, Mr. Ridgard said. While LOVE-TV's over-the-air transmission is confined to Channel 6 in the Corporate Area and Channel 3 in St. Ann, "using this same digitalisation network, we have been able to get signals into cable systems operating in Ocho Rios, Montego Bay and Mandeville. We have developed a substantive quality signal to all the Corporate Area cable companies. We will be expanding the service now to St. Elizabeth, Hanover and Trelawny," Mr. Ridgard said.
WORKING HARD TO ATTRACT COMMERCIAL SUPPORT
Having substantially improved the reception for signals, the TV station is working hard to attract commercial support, Mr. Ridgard said. The station is proceeding cautiously concerning local programmes, he said, as "the mortality rate of TV programmes is considerably higher than for radio. We don't want to spend an abundance of money on a programme that is transmitted once and has to be forgotten after that. That is one of the reasons we have an abundance of foreign programmes on. But the real objective is that we will gradually reduce that number and replace it with local productions. That is part of the reason why we have also sought to establish a linkage with cable companies because they do have access to the immediacy of programmes or material originating in their area.
"Therefore we could take from them, those productions which would satisfy a national audience and therefore we can then put it out. We have good co-operation with some of them at present and there area activities in their areas which seem to fit into the format of our station and we get the material from them quite willingly," said Mr. Ridgard.
Quite accustomed to criticism concerning the seemingly high foreign content of broadcasts on TV, Mr. Ridgard cited costs as the main factor why many local programmes have not been produced for Jamaican consumption. The station, he said, sources much of its programmes from similarly minded networks overseas and the agreement with these entities in some instances mean that the shows must be broadcast as is. A pet peeve among LOVE-TV viewers is the sudden discontinuance of a programme before it comes to its end. So one might be watching a Christian movie and then it stops at a scene and it is followed by say a T.D. Jakes broadcast. Mr. Ridgard explained. "Part of the reason for that is that there was no abundance of capital for funding the TV station. We are depending on the computer for programming to control the output for 24 hours of the days. We do not have a person manually operating the studio. With a manually-assisted operation, this kind of interruption could be controlled. 2003 is the year we hope to step-by-step clear out the bugs in the system."
