Dave Gardy, CEO TV Worldwide

TV Worldwide, founded in 1999 by CEO Dave Gardy, is the Internet’s first TV network. It focuses on helping customers successfully create, promote, leverage and distribute streaming media content online. We discovered Dave’s unique and exciting company just before going to FRI. And that led to TV Worldwide becoming an in-kind sponsor.

What follows are parts of a conversation we had with Dave about TV Worldwide’s goal,  business model, new partnership with IAFC, and stand on diversity.

TV Worldwide was the first Internet TV network having been birthed out of a prior company that I had built and then sold in 1999. Our goal is to create Internet TV channels in specific niche industries. We believe that the Internet will do to cable what cable did to broadcast television. Cable went to niche sectors like music and history when there were only three broadcast networks.

The value in the future will be the creation of channels for professions and special interest groups and also for organizations in a private label framework. The thinking is that if you create these large channels and build the content worldwide—that’s why we’re TV Worldwide—you’re building communities online and just like MTV was the first music television network, our maritime channel is the first maritime Internet TV channel. We have a channel for people with disabilities. We have a channel for veterans and we have a channel for the homeland defense sector, which is actually where our relationship with IAFC developed. We have a private label channel for the National League of Cities (NCL), where we cover all of their events.

A lot of people look at Internet TV like YouTube—trying to get mass audiences, which is always going to be a challenge because of the bandwidth costs. But our focus is with professions who have reasons to get content that’s targeted to a laser-focused demographic.

Our Homeland Defense TV Channel grew out of our disabilities channel. The Department of Homeland Security was one of our largest advertisers because there are all kinds of issues with both language and having people with disabilities communicating with first responders. This was from the perspective of getting first responders to understand that people are disabled and what their specials needs are and for people with specials needs to understand that first responders may not know they’re disabled. This has to be communicated as well as what to do.  

As for how our relationship with IAFC came about … We had done a video with National League of Cities about monitoring the biometrics of firefighters and also their position in a building with an enhanced new technology called IPv6. It allows more IP transmit of data not only to the incident commander but also to town hall/city hall as well as internationally—people can watch experts solve problems all because it can be on the Internet.

IAFC’s Safety, Health and Survival Section saw the video and also saw what we’re doing for the National League of Cities and asked if we could cover FRI.

Our model is to get the exhibitors as sponsors and share the revenue with the conference host. We went to FRI and got a tremendous response. So now we’re planning to have an IAFC Channel.

Right now we’re finding sponsors and content. The good news is that IAFC has a ton of content that they can put online. They also want to do special events.

We’re growing very quickly. We recently got an investment in the company. We’re taking on a 5,000 square foot studio in addition to our 6,000 square foot existing facility. We can host a live audience of up to 250 people. We’re right down the highway from IAFC.

We have a private label channel for the National League of Cities (NLC), where we cover all of their events.

Diversity and inclusion is vital to any industry. In fact, we’ve done content for NLC that addresses the issue. From working with NLC, we’ve learned that the public administrative workforce serving communities has to be diverse. The fire service is no exception. Our own hiring reflects diversity and inclusion.

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As a result of IAFC’s partnership with TV Worldwide, you can now access a 12-month video-on-demand archive of the footage from FRI 2008 that includes selected keynotes, educational sessions and interviews with exhibitors and attendees. View Videos

Here’s a direct link to TV Worldwide reporter Audrey Adams’ interview with Larry!

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