WorldTV has a history which stretches back 12 years to a winter’s evening in Toronto.

  • December 1995 - Our Founder first experiences live streaming media over the Internet in Toronto. Looking for music from his home town of London, England, he tunes in to a Virgin radio broadcast on the Internet using an early version of Real Player.
  • “The Epiphany” - If audio can be streamed over the Internet, so too can video. The only thing standing in the way is bandwidth and computer processing power - two problems guaranteed to be solved by the biggest players in the industry. Our Founder envisages a future where the Internet becomes akin to a global cable TV network, with no barriers to entry and no geographical boundaries. He registers the domain name WorldTV.com with a vision to one day create a global network of amateur video enthusiasts creating content from all corners of the globe.
  • 1996-1998 - Early versions of the WorldTV website feature links to streaming media sites, a mini-site for the Millennium Video Project (later to become the Millennium Photo Project), signup forms, test broadcasts, a Bluffer’s Guide to Video Journalism, and a mission statement about the future direction of WorldTV.
  • August 1998 - Our Founder writes a business plan for WorldTV - ‘A New Era in Television’ and begins talking to potential investors, grant bodies and funding agencies about his plans. He raises $5 million in angel funding but decides not to proceed with looming problems in the financial markets ahead. Other high profile startups like Pop.com and DEN fail spectacularly and burn through millions of their investor’s money.
  • 1999-2001 - Klive launches a self-funded experimental project “to test the systems and theories for WorldTV” using a simpler medium - photography. The goal is to test a new model he calls “Community Enterprise” (similar to what is now called “Crowd Sourcing“). The Millennium Photo Project launches to “Document the entire World on the night of the turning of the Millennium through the contributions of thousands of amateur photographers worldwide”. The project is organized entirely via the Internet, and more than 5500 photographers in 117 countries sign up to participate. More than a quarter of a million photos are taken over a 24 hour period on New Year’s Eve 1999 with the best 500 of these being made into a book entitled “Dawn of the 21st Century“. Each photographer is mailed a free copy of the book, no matter where they are in the World. For most participants it is their very first time being published in a book. The project is widely reported on the likes of CNN, BBC, ABC World News Now, CBS, FOX, NBC and in hundreds of other radio, TV, magazine and newspaper features. The site is translated by volunteers into 8 languages and the book is published and promoted using a community effort that extends right across the globe. Participants use press release templates and PR tutorials on the site to mount publicity campaigns in their local areas. To this day the Millennium Photo Project represents the largest photojournalism project in history and an incredible example of people and Internet power.
  • 2002-2004 - WorldTV continues to attract curious users to its website which now features an enigmatic homepage featuring an ‘Easter Egg’ allowing more intrigued (and observant) users to leave their e-mail address. The site continues to host a variety of experimental projects and content on the site. Klive continues to refine his original ideas as broadband penetration takes off.
  • 2005 - The new era of WorldTV launches with the WorldTV Blog
  • June 2006 - Launch of the WorldTV Charts. Features in the Wall Street Journal and Lifehacker.
  • October 2006 - WorldTV begins active development on its next generation web video service
  • March 2007 - Early demo of Editor interface shown to key figures at Video on the Net in San Jose
  • April/May/June 2007 - Early alpha’s and beta’s are reviewed positively by key bloggers including Profy.com and WebTV Wire. Also mentioned on Techcrunch
  • Sept 2007 - Public beta in final development
  • Nov 14th 2007 - WorldTV launches in public beta at the NewTeeVee Live Conference in San Francisco. A launch video accompanies the announcement.
  • Dec 5th 2007 - WorldTV hosts its launch party in London, England