eTV on Stratos - Television for the Wide Awake

eTV on Stratos  -  Television for the Wide Awake

A treasure trove of quality educational programmes will be available to a television audience again when Triangle Stratos launches the e-cast ‘eTV’ series on weekday mornings from Monday 3 December 2007.

Stratos and e-cast Limited will relaunch the acclaimed eTV brand with a whole new line-up of programmes, mostly New Zealand made and previously available only as live streams over the internet and video or DVD recordings.

‘eTV’ will screen every weekday from 9am as a service provided by the Auckland-based company e-cast Limited. The timeslot will initially be half an hour but this is planned to extend to an hour every weekday by early 2008 and to 90 minutes by autumn next year.

Triangle Stratos Chief Executive Officer Jim Blackman says the inclusion of eTV in the channel’s line-up will attract viewers across a diverse range of ages and interests and will consolidate Stratos’s place as a national public broadcaster with an exceptional mix of viewing options.

e-cast Director of New Business Development, Gresham Bradley, says broadcasting the eTV series on Triangle Stratos opens a window to a nationwide television audience – including parents, teachers and students from schools and tertiary institutions - eager to share in a rich, relatively untapped resource. “It’s the broadcasting opportunity we’ve been waiting for,” says Mr Bradley.

e-cast has a solid pedigree in developing multimedia education services including coverage of New Zealand science - its HotScience.co.nz website won the Qantas Media Award for best feature website in 2007. Video programmes from the Hot Science resource, Health programmes from the MedTV specialist Health service and other unique New Zealand educational resources will be among the first to screen on Stratos.  

New Zealand Culture, Arts and History will also feature in the new eTV service, Mr Bradley says the public response to news that educational television is coming back to New Zealand’s screens has been positive, without exception. “There is definitely an audience eager for television that enhances their lives, rather than just entertainment.”

Robert Boyd-Bell is e-cast Director of Business Affairs and the founder of eTV in New Zealand when it originally broadcast on TVOne. He is thrilled to see the service return to New Zealand broadcast television as an enhancement of the e-cast-education web-based service already available to schools around the country.

 "This is our own Digital Strategy - Convergence in action" says Boyd-Bell.

"It's an opportunity for New Zealanders to experience their own culture on television without the limitations that commercial television imposes".

-ends

© Scoop Media