[Community Television] Yorkshire to launch own TV channel

[Michelle McGuire]

Yorkshire to launch own TV channel

Martin Wainwright
Friday May 13, 2005
The Guardian

The region that gave the film world stripping steelworkers and naked  
calendar girls from the Women's Institute is to break new ground by  
setting up its own TV channel.

A satellite service exclusively from Yorkshire and the Humber will be  
launched at the end of the year, beaming a diet of film from the  
white rose acres to up to 34 million European viewers.

The initiative was announced yesterday by Yorkshire Forward, the  
regional development agency which has chosen film and TV as a lead  
regenerator of the local economy. Apart from a successful series of  
films including The Full Monty, Brassed Off and Calendar Girls, the  
region is building a stable of independent producers and digital  
media companies.

The channel, provisionally called Propeller because of its planned  
role in pushing the region's talent, will initially broadcast some  
six hours a day through the Sky Digital platform. Financed by a  
package including £2,900,000 from Yorkshire Forward, it is the first  
"region TV" of its type, although there are echoes of pre-merger  
stations from the early days of regional ITV.

Propeller will reach the world from studios in Immingham, a small  
town on the Humber south bank. The port has its own small place in  
screen history, albeit not a particularly Yorkshire one, as a  
bolthole in the John Le Carré spy thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Precise content has yet to be decided, but viewers will not have to  
be Yorkshire addicts to enjoy the output. Although Yorkshire  
Forward's aim is to "promote the region as a world class place for  
digital and media companies to do business", the method will be using  
the best of locally made work.

"There'll be new quirky animations, provocative digital short films  
and challenging documentaries," said Simon Couth, chief executive of  
Immage Studios, where the channel will be based.

Yorkshire's latest film offering, Like Minds, will be screened at  
Cannes next week. The Australian production starring Toni Collette is  
a tale of schoolboy murder set in Bradford and Giggleswick. An  
eventual airing on Propeller seems a certainty.


Source: Media Guardian

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,1482981,00.html