Web TV features T-ride online
Published: Thursday, March 22, 2007 8:25 PM CDT
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Ron Brumley’s Telluride Web TV.com
offers programming anytime
By Reilly Capps
Missed the girls hockey games in Arvada last weekend?
Couldn’t make it to “Chicago” at the Palm? The “Vagina
Monologues” pass you by?
No worries. They’ve all been archived
on Telluride- webtv.com, and you can watch them whenever
you want, on your computer.
Telluride Web TV.com is a relatively unknown Web site
that has hundreds of hours of Telluride events archived
and ready to be watched.
The site is owned and operated by Ron Brumley, who’s
trying to bring the future of television to Telluride.
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“I’ve been flying under the radar,”
Brumley says. “On-demand TV is where the cable industry
is going, and I’ve got the opportunity with the Internet
to get that started.”
Your days of actually attending events are over. Footage
from the X Games, Pee Wee hockey, Rock and Roll Academy
concerts and Valley Floor fundraisers are all available
online. You may never leave your house again.
Rocky Mountain Bedrock, Thom Carnevale’s show on KOTO,
is streamed live on Wednesday, but is also available
anytime — and filmed for your enjoyment.
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Carnevale said that almost 1,000
people watched his show Wednesday with local comedian
and actor Jeb Berrier, and more than 1,400 people
watched the previous week’s show with the town’s
sustainability coordinator Kris Holstrom.
“I was surprised at the extent of the viewers,”
Carnevale said. “It’s been real fun, real exciting.”
There’s a chance that more people watch his show on the
Internet than listen to it on the radio, Carnevale said,
and the viewers come from all over.
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Brumley made his first Web site for a
friend in Arizona in 1992 or 1993, when the Internet was
just revving up. The friend had a bagel and coffee
company, and Brumley got free bagels and java in
exchange for his service.
He’s been building Web sites ever since with his
company, Hypersloth Internet Service.
And now, for nearly two years, he’s been working on his
labor of love.
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Brumley roams the state with his high
definition camera, recording things he thinks
Telluriders — or people from anywhere — would be
interested in.
Viewers from 40 different countries watched the Western
Colorado Conference on Renewable Energy.
He said he’s been surprised by the number of hits he’s
gotten. For the girls hockey games this weekend, for
example, Brumley had 2,017 visitors. For a Pinhead
lecture on the periodic table, Brumley had more than
9,000 viewers, many from educators who used the lecture
to teach their students.
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And he’s been surprised by how long
people spend watching.
“The first time they take a serious look a this,”
Brumley says, “they watch for hours, like two and a half
hours. We have people who let it run in the background.”
A lot of his viewers, he supposes, are connected to an
event.
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“The parents love the sporting
events,” Brumley says. “If I broadcast a game, the
parents watch it over and over again. If they want to
send a link off to grandma and grandpa they can.”
If you want a more lasting and intense viewing
experience, Brumley can transfer any program to a DVD in
high definition, and they’re all for sale at $23 for
most events.
There have been obstacles. Finding enough bandwidth has
been tough. Brumley piggy-backs on his Internet
company’s bandwidth. And he didn’t break even until
about six months ago.
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But Brumley has plans to expand the
channel.
At some point Brumley hopes to generate his own
programming, doing his own news reports, morning shows
or feature programs.
He’s already started doing play-by-play for the sporting
events he covers, and he’s become addicted to being a
play-by-play man.
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“It just rolls,” he says. “It’s an
addiction.”
Reilly Capps can be reached at
reilly@telluridenews.com.
