164 West 25th Street, 10th Floor
10001 New York
USA

http://www.linktv.org

Link TV, your connection to the world Direct TV 375 DISH network...

business contact

You must be logged in to see the business contact.

activities

• Press
  • TV

visited events

• WOMEX 2000
• WOMEX 2001
• WOMEX 2002
• WOMEX 2003
• WOMEX 2004
• WOMEX 2005
• WOMEX 2006
• WOMEX 2007
• WOMEX 2008

company description

Link TV, your connection to the world



Direct TV 375

DISH network 9410

www.linktv.org

newsletter #1



When we launched as WorldLink TV in December 1999, we had only 65 world music videos. Today we have over 500 carefully selected videos and climbing. It's been such an exciting year, full of changes and new projects; we really felt it was time to share some of it with you, our music community. We hope you'll enjoy this first newsletter, and we look forward to seeing many of you at WOMEX 2003 in Sevilla.



Steven Lawrence

Director of Music & Cultural Programming



Ms. Michal Shapiro

Associate Director of Music Programming



OUR NEW NAME:

The first thing to tell you is that we've shortened our name from WorldLink TV to Link TV, and our tag line is now "Connecting Americans to the World." Please make sure to update your databases.



VIEWERSHIP GROWS:

The results are in from the survey we commissioned this summer from leading polling firm Penn, Schoen, and Berland. We're very pleased to announce that our audience has doubled in the last year and we now have over almost five million people watching an hour or more of Link TV every week. Of course, we won't be happy until every one of the 21 million households we currently reach starts tuning in!



ONLINE MUSIC STORE TO LAUNCH NOVEMBER 10th:

After receiving thousands of emails from our viewers asking where they can buy the music we show on Link TV (and inspired by the success of the new Apple store), we decided it was time for us to give them an instant alternative to buying a CD from Amazon. With Calabash Music (www.calabashmusic.com) as our partner, we'll be launching an on line service starting November 10th. Our viewers will be able to download most of the songs we play on the channel for $.99 each or buy CDs. One of the reasons we selected Calabash is their fair trade policy; it is truly supportive of the music, the musicians, and the recording labels. We'll start promoting the Link Music Store on the channel and our website the week of November 3rd. Now you have more reason than ever to get your videos to us, so we can connect your artists with our viewers.



LINK TV TEAMS UP WITH NORTHSIDE RECORDS FOR THE NORDIC ROOTS FESTIVAL:

We're always ready to collaborate with our friends in the world music business, so when Northside Records asked how we might work together to promote the Nordic Roots festival in Minneapolis Sept 19-21, we decided to produce a half-hour Nordic Roots Special and on-air festival announcement to broadcast the week leading up to the event. The task was made easier by the wealth of footage that Northside was able to provide us. Rob Simonds, the label owner has made a point of videotaping past festivals with a multi camera system. He also has an excellent relationship with the local PBS station, which allows him access to footage they have shot of festival performers. As a result we were able to present some of the greats of the field-Frifot, Väsen, Filarfolket, to name just a few-in our special. It stands as both a great promotional tool for the festival and as one of our favorite music blocks, so we will be re-running it again in months ahead.



The festival was a huge success, by the way, and one man even said he had flown in from Boston on the strength of seeing our program! We were further gratified to find out that fifty per cent of the audience knew about Link TV, and half of those had seen our Nordic Roots Special.



As part of the cross promotion, the LinkTV banner was displayed at the festival site, on the stage of the Cedar Cultural Center. The label and venue also inserted our promotional material in the program guides, as well as giving us an ad and sponsorship credit. We'd love to work with other labels and venues on similar cross-promotional projects, so keep us in mind, and let us know what you have coming up!



LINKTV PRESENTATION AT WOMEX 2003:



Rob Simonds and Bakhrom Primkulov (Sevara Nazarkhan's manager) will be guest panelists when we present our first conference at WOMEX, on Friday, at 3 pm. We'll be discussing -you guessed it-videos, and how to make them work for you. Rob will be talking about his decision to produce performance videos, and how showing them on Link TV has increased sales. We show several of Sevara Nazarkhan's videos on the channel, and they get tremendous viewer response. Bakhrom will discuss how he goes about making these beautiful videos inexpensively. Our own director of music and cultural programming Steven Lawrence (one of the startup members of MTV) will also be showing some of our favorite videos that exhibit a combination of high creativity and low budget. He'll give you tips on how to produce videos that represent your music, stand as good video, and are effective marketing tools. It should be an informative and productive event, and we urge those of you who will be attending WOMEX to check the conference out, which will be in the IMZ screening area (The Cazorla Room). If you haven't had a chance to see any of our world music blocks lately, the IMZ will be presenting two half-hours in one of their screenings. And of course, do drop by our booth H5, and talk to us about how you can get the most mileage for your music from Link TV.



FEATURE VIDEO ROTATIONS



We're going to be working even harder in the coming months to help get the word out about great new music releases. Watch for our Link Picks and Premieres, which will also receive parallel promotion in the Link TV Music Store. We'll be spotlighting the videos that we think are special as they come in, rather than waiting for a full half-hour block to be created (which can take weeks). And that all adds up to timely promotion.



There's more in the pipeline, but for now..…stay tuned!