VeeSee launches on Sky Digital

[BGonaSTICK]

VeeSee TV has launched as a microchannel on Information TV's Sky Digital platform. The launch follows the creation of a broadband channel in May. Broadcasting on Sky channel 167, VeeSee TV offers the UK's 9m deaf and hearing impaired people their own TV channel three times per week (Tuesdays at 3pm, Thursdays 8pm and Sundays 1pm).

The channel has been launched with no grants or subsidies.

Fred Perkins, founder and chief executive of Information TV, said: "I'm really excited that we're partnering with VeeSee in what is a perfect application of the principles behind Information TV—making it economically possible to make TV work for niche audiences, unattractive to major broadcasters.

"Whilst community programming is all the rage, the needs of significant minorities, like the deaf, have been largely ignored, because they don't sit comfortably with mass-audience TV."

Susie Grant, director of VeeSee TV, said: "We're delighted that at last the deaf can get proper access to broadcast TV, with programmes reflecting and tackling deaf life as a whole. Deaf people are real people, not a lobbying group forcing accessibility obligations on broadcasters.

"The deaf community has all the talents and skills of the general population, but has had little opportunity to present itself on television. And commercial organisations are beginning to recognise that this is a largely untapped niche market, amenable to businesses which make just a little extra effort to present themselves and their services to the deaf."

Source: dtg