WildEarth (WE) is an ecosystem of LIVE wildlife channels and broadcasters. WE believe that by broadcasting LIVE you can actually experience what nature is truly about, because you feel like you are there and because nothing is edited or scripted.

Our mission is to provide people around the world with immersive experiences in nature.

WildEarth is a dedicated broadcaster that focuses on providing great wildlife content to viewers, both on the Internet and TV, as well as helping expert producers of content reach ever higher in the mission to provide immersive experiences in nature. All the while helping to make this content economically viable through monetisation programs that include advertising on the Internet and licensing of the content through our WildEarth 3DTV channel, to pay-tv operators.

The two guiding principles of our vision are honesty and sustainability.

Honesty because WE believe that viewers the world over want to have truthful, simple and real experiences in nature, enhanced with accurate information delivered by experts. Every aspect of our broadcasts are inspired by the mission to show nature as it really is, and to get you the viewer as close to the truth of nature as possible. Thats why WE broadcast LIVE, why we endeavour with ever more immersive technology like 3D High Definition and 3D stereo sound and even when you watch our post produced diary series you will have a sense that you are being told the truth ... because you are.

Sustainability is also a big part of who WE are.

WE realise that in order to keep on being able to broadcast and enjoy these fragile natural ecosystems we are going to have to help contribute to conserving them. The unfortunate reality of our world is that for anything to be conserved it must economically contribute to the lives of those people that are expected to conserve it. So for example, unless Africa's islands of wildernesses contribute economically to the lives of those communities that surround these islands, the pressure to kill and eat the animals or to utilise the land for agriculture becomes overwhelming. Furthermore the growth in traditional tourism is often unsustainable in fragile ecosystems. The continuous increase in more and more people physically visiting precarious habitats ultimately damages the environment. This conflict, where the need for more money to justify conservation, needs growth in numbers, which harms the resource that is being exploited in order to conserve it, can be resolved to some degree by Virtual Tourism. Essentially a theoretically unlimited number of people can go on a virtual safari while only one vehicle actually travels through the environment and the return-on-impact is much much better. WildEarth is a pioneer in the concept of virtual tourism and is in the process of forming subsidiary companies, like safari.tv, that are focused, and local, LIVE wildlife producers. As these companies reach profitability, the local communities and land owners become equity partners, which allows them to share in the revenues that are created as a direct result of conserving the wildernesses. Hopefully years from now WE will look back on these early days and be proud that WE were forging a path to true environmental sustainability.

History

WildEarth.TV was founded in 2006 by Emily and Graham Wallington with the critical help of three investors. The vision was to create a LIVE wildlife channel that simultaneously broadcasts on the Internet and TV.

The principle involved taking the LIVE community driven elements of a webcam and the high production values of a presenter led TV series and get them working together at Djuma Game Reserve. So construction of the crew camp, final control, receive towers and first LIVE safari vehicle began in September 2006. A great many trenches had to be dug, wires pulled, holes drilled, not to mention all the T's that had to be crossed and I's dotted. Eventually WE began broadcasting on the 27th of April 2007, which just happens to be Freedom Day in South Africa, and the anniversary of the first democratic election that took place in 1994.

The first few months were very very difficult as there were several persistent problems with almost all aspects of the system. But slowly, one by one, the team worked through them and the audience kept on growing and growing. The number of shows increased, the number of hours per day that the safari goes out has increased and the number of minutes of video served per day has increased to over 2 million per day.

Many people have been involved with making WE what it is today. From investors that you never hear about, but without whom nothing would have been possible. To various crew members that have come and gone, some stayed for a few days or a month, while others are still with us after years and years. Of course without the support and friendship of Pippa and Jurie Moolman (owners of Djuma) WE would not be here now. Peter Braat, our technical director, partner and investor, who is always a pillar of strength, wisdom and ... solutions. There is the dedicated admin team made up of Karen, Aquila and Valorie who never sleep and keep an eagle eye on all the comings and goings in the far flung corners of the network, always maintaining the 'family values' that underpin the WEcommunity. Torsten and Christian at Global Media Consult, our TV distributors, and their intrepid team of agents globally that work tirelessly to educate the television industry about our vision. Last, but not least, are all the viewers, without whom there is nothing.

10% of our viewers watch for 2.5 hours per viewing session, 50% watch for more than 30 minutes ... this is a testament to the dedication of our viewership, but also the stickiness of our content.

Along the way WE realised that we could (and should) share what we had learnt about this genre of broadcasting with others. WE also knew that other LIVE wildlife broadcasters desperately needed a way to start generating some revenue to start at least contributing to the high cost of producing and distributing this content. So the WEproducers program was born. A simple system which allows certain producers to send their LIVE streams to the WE platform from where we insert ads and handle the global distribution and provide the producers with an embedded (and branded) player that they can put back into their websites. This not only meant that they had a zero cost of distribution, but actually made some money as well.

The WEproducer program grew throughout 2009, and 2010 promises to see a substantial step forward with many new producers, more efficient advertising placement, which leads to higher revenues per viewed stream, increased distribution and better quality channels.

In late 2009 the WEdistributor program was soft launched which allows approved websites to embed certain channels and earn a percentage of the advertising revenue. This is a very exciting program that promises to not only benefit the distributor with premium content with non of the risk, but also provide far more traffic to the various producers.

The TV side of WildEarth has had numerous false starts, including deals with Telkom Media (a new pay TV operator in South Africa that never launched) and SomethingTV (an IPTV operator in the UK that slowly faded away). However, in the third quarter of 2009, WE signed an exclusive global distribution partnership with Global Media Consult (distributors for Al Jazeera, Bloomberg and many others) and expect great things in 2010.