Seeing ourselves on regional TV - a dream becomes reality
By Juanita Cleaver, General Manager, Channel North Television
Five years ago a small group of people in Whangarei came up with a dream – to set up Northland’s first community television station.
After a lot of hard work, and great support from the local community and businesses, the broadcast switch was flicked on in August, 2008 - and the dream became a reality.
Regional TV has a strength that the myriad of national channels cannot match – the ability for local people to see themselves and their own community in action.
I began as Project Manager for the channel in 2008 and have watched its growth with pride.
We have grown from a few volunteers to a team of skilled 10 full time employees and a wealth of enthusiastic and talented volunteers. We are now very proud to announce that Channel North Television has now been successfully broadcasting for two years.
We all have thoroughly enjoyed that time, having the opportunity to film and broadcast local talent, events, and our heroes and achievers within our community.
There has been a hole in the multimedia industry in Northland and Channel North has filled that hole.
We are the only TV station in the country to give equal time to English and Te Reo on our local news, which runs every day.
We have now stepped up our production arm, offering multimedia services to local businesses and organisations. We offer top quality video for event coverage, advertising, website content, corporate/training videos and DVD production.
We produce our content using professional audio and visual equipment and software, including Sony HD cameras, Adobe Master Collection CS3 as well as professional separate sound and visual editing desks.
Our recording studios and headquarters are at Manaia View School, where we have numerous community links promoting and covering local initiatives.
We are involved in many sectors of the community, including education, law, arts and music, sport and recreation, physical and mental health, youth and business.
Our major partners are Mania View School, 155 Community House and Northtec and our board of trustees has representation from the business, education, Iwi and community sectors.
We are run by the Northland TV Charitable Trust, and our production house is the largest in the area, in terms of content produced and access and availability to the talent pool.
What Does Channel North Television Do?
We provide community broadcasting for the greater Whangarei area as well as video production services including:
• Cheap and effective advertising for businesses
• Event coverage
• Local interest shows
• Sponsorship opportunities for businesses
• DVD production and duplicating
• Corporate videos
• Documentaries
Channel North Television is always looking for community input into the TV station. If you would like to volunteer your time, have a great show idea or even have some content, give us a call at the station and we will see what we can do.
Tuning into Channel North is easy. Go to www.channelnorth.co.nz and follow the instructions. The site also has all the information you will need on the station, including programmes and advertising details.
Our current programmes include kids’ show, daily news, a sports programme, local events, a community diary, magazine shows and programmes about artists.
Channel North televisions transmission on UHF 40/623.25 MHZ , from Mount Parihaka mast reaches over 45,000 households in the greater Whangarei area.
Transmission is 24 hours a day and local programmes screen between 1pm and 10.30pm. Some of our programmes are rebroadcast on Stratos, Freeview, and Sky TV with a potential viewer ship of around 4,173,000.
In Northland there is a large population of very talented artists, musicians, and filmmakers, and Whangarei is slowly loosing its most precious resource, its people.
Our long term goal is to not only stop the slow migration away from Whangarei but reverse it, attracting talented people to our area.
