ITV West’s former Head of News, Steve Egginton, has launched an internet TV channel for the Mendip area after three years of working with software specialists on an interactive video platform that is already generating attention from some of the big media players.

Egginton, who famously once told the Society of Editors annual conference that newspapers would sink if they stuck to ink, sees the Mendip TV channel as a complement to the Mednip Times which he began two years ago with another former ITV newsman, Mark Adler.

He says: “On Mendip TV viewers have various options to switch to any number of sites, while pausing the video, through a slider panel at the side of the main player, as well as viewing related articles from Mendip Times, or accessing the Mendip Times site itself.”

The software – developed by Ji-Tu TV – can also be used in a wide range of other applications and is capable of supporting a complete TV schedule and archive service, and of allowing advertisers to show video as well as providing links to their own sites.

Egginton believes this multi-media approach is a template for the future growth of local media. He said: “Ironically when I first started streaming video on the internet at HTV, I was told that broadband was a pipe-dream that we wouldn’t see in our lifetime and ITV closed our website down. Now thanks to advances in print and video production and the roll-out of broadband I think we are about to see a new golden age of local media run by local people, offering services across a variety of platforms, accessed by a broader spread of consumers.”

When he and Mark Adler launched Mendip Times, a free, quality monthly magazine, two years ago, it ran to 36 pages and had a print run of 10,000. Today, the magazine has 52 pages and a print-run of 18,000.

Egginton added: “The success of the magazine has been astonishing and while it will continue to grow to serve increasing numbers of advertisers and readers, the real excitement will be in the explosion of internet TV.”

To view the new channel, visit" Mendip TV":http://www.mendiptv.co.uk/

Steve Egginton is a director of the Society of Editors, a former manager with the BBC and ITV and former deputy news editor of the Western Daily Press.