Instead of giving audiences just
a window on the world, independent satellite television
channel WorldLink TV breaks through the proverbial
pane so viewers can engage in discussions with program
guests from around the globe.
The San Rafael-based nonprofit channel
combines the traditional TV audience call-in format
with two-way video conferencing to connect Americans
with a variety of people involved in a particular
foreign event or issue.
WorldLink works closely with Internews
Interactive, a San Rafael media firm using digital
formats to connect people on the street with television
broadcasts.
Contrary to conventional wisdom,
Americans are really interested in what's going on
in the world," said Kim Spencer, a former TV
news and documentary producer who launched WorldLink
in 1999 and now serves as the channel's president.
Producers travel to events in Asia,
Europe and Africa in search of people to participate
in projects. Audio and video feeds are transmitted
via integrated services digital network (ISDN) lines
that can each carry 128 kilobits of data to the channel's
studio on Battery Street in San Francisco. From there,
control room producers, editors and technicians put
the feeds together with live, in-studio content as
the program airs.
The technique evolved from the two-way
satellite TV "spacebridges" Spencer pioneered
in the 1980s with Evelyn Messinger, also WorldLink's
director of interactive programming and president
of InterAct.
Spacebridges involved satellite
TV exchanges and were used in numerous programs such
as "The Moscow Link" and the Emmy-award
winning "Capital to Capital" connecting
American scientists, journalists, politicians and
others with their Soviet counterparts.
The digital capabilities have brought
down the $500,000 TV production costs with previous
technologies, said Messinger, who also is a former
producer and editor for CBS and public television.
The first compressed video system for "Vis a
Vis," the critically acclaimed series co-developed
by Spencer that linked families in different countries,
cost a maximum of $10,000 to produce.
"(But) it isn't really the technology it's about," she said. "It's
about what could be done."
Recent programs on WorldLink - which reaches 18 million homes
across the country on channel 9410 on the Dish Network and 375 on DirecTV - have
focused on conflicts in the Middle East.
In the December special, "Afghan
Women: Eyes on the Future," the channel used
digital video conferencing to link Islamic scholar
and program moderator Farid Younos from the San Francisco
studio with attendees of the Afghan Women's Summit
in Brussels.
In addition, summit participants
Suria Paikan, of the United Nations Special Mission
for Afghanistan, and Saha Saba, a member of the 24-year-old
political group the Revolutionary Association for
the Women of Afghanistan, responded to U.S. viewers
who phoned in their opinions and questions to the
show.
"Today the world thinks if (the rulers) are not Taliban,
the issue in Afghanistan is solved, and this has really made me very sad," said
Saba in response to a comment by a caller identified as "Mark from Texas."
"Afghanistan is still not free," she said. "Don't be deceived
by (the) few women without burka (the traditional veil). Don't be deceived by
(the) few men without beards.
"Other programs include a call-in show with Arab American
Institute President James Zogby and the miniseries "Arab Diaries," which
WorldLink obtained from First Run/Icarus Films.
Be it through original programming
or purchased shows, WorldLink and InterAct serve
as a platform for diverse points of view. "TV
shows are really the most powerful medium of our
time," Messinger said. "My biggest insight
was if you could engage people - not just have them
sit there and listen - and participate in discussions,
you could really transform the sort of way that Americans
don't really pay attention to what's going on.
"Both WorldLink and InterAct are spin-offs of the Arcata-based
Internews Network, which Spencer, Messinger and colleague David Hoffman started
in 1982. The purpose of the network, which Hoffman still heads, was to create
global understanding through media toward the end of the Cold War.
Messinger left in 1997 to start InterAct in San Rafael to further develop the
two-way technology and find more uses for it. Spencer began WorldLink two years
later with a $120,000 development grant from the Chicago-based MacArthur Foundation
after the Federal Communications Commission required satellite networks to set
aside channels for noncommercial, nonprofit organizations.
"Really this was a unique opportunity because of the few
regulations and requirements to create public channels and WorldLink's ability
to get that license," said Arthur Sussman, vice president for the MacArthur
Foundation, which grants money to WorldLink through its $180 million general
fund.
The channel operates on a $3 million
budget funded largely by grants from institutions
such as the MacArthur and Ford foundations.
"We had a lot of requests for documentaries and interesting
programs, but not for establishing a TV station," Sussman said. "I
think the idea of having that as a place on TV where you can go and know with
some certainty that you're going to see programming international in scope is
what we wanted to achieve."
Public television stations from
across the country have started requesting Worldlink's
programming, which the channel provides for free "because
our mission is to get the stuff shown," Spencer
said.
WorldLink officials are now thinking
of spinning off a music network that would carry
the various music videos and shows now interspersed
between documentaries, international news broadcasts
and other programs.
The music channel would be on cable
TV, which would offer more viewership. Proceeds from
the for-profit channel would help fund WorldLink.
"We've looked for ways to be sustainable outside of the
usual public broadcasting sources," Spencer said. "Our valuable resource
is our air time, and we've found that particularly with the music." He added
that WorldLink is looking for investors for the spin off, which he would like
to launch in a year.
Copyright
2002 Marin Independent Journal, a MediaNews Group publication.
