Tough times in analogue city
After six seasons on community analogue television, Yianni Zionos doesn't want to get left behind in the great switch-off.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News
One of community television’s more enterprising faces is presenter Yianni Zinonos whose Yianni’s City Life is in its sixth season of broadcast.
With a mix of lifestyle and cooking, his self-funded show is filmed largely in his own Sydney home.
Airing across four states on stations including TVS and Channel 31, it is one of numerous shows whose future hinges on community broadcasting switching from analogue to digital.
“Its like telling everyone to reheat things in the oven, when they have a microwave,” says Zinonos.
“The government cant just pull the plug on community TV. People who have Foxtel whose TVs are permanently set on digital find it almost impossible to get analogue as well. You would have to be Einstein to do it. I have only seen one person do it, and it took 40 minutes to set up.”
Zinonos says viewers of community television enjoy grass roots television, not staged reality shows.
“Because no-one is getting paid, you know there’s not all these hidden corporate agendas.”
Yianni’s City Life also has an audience outlet via YouTube.
This week his show interviews sculpture Bjorn Godwin, creator of “Neighbour day” Andrew Heslop and comedienne Jackie Loeb.
Share
- Tagged with Yianni's City Life
3 Responses
“whose TVs are permanently set on digital find it almost impossible to get analogue as well. You would have to be Einstein to do it. I have only seen one person do it, and it took 40 minutes to set up”
Yep, running one extra antenna lead from the tv to the passthrough plug on the back of the set top box takes me 40 minutes – 1 minute to actually set it up, then 39 minutes of ‘testing’…. (you done yet, the dishes are’nt gonna clean themselves? – no dear still testing the tv)
Its far more complicated than that. They are private enterprises, not public broadcasters. They all have different management and some people certainly do get paid.
Govt – state and fed – should help out ch 31, get then onto digital and Foxtel should take it up as well as they already have NITV & Aurora. When I last lived in Syd, it was hard to get in some areas on analogue – harder than SBS used to be.