WE are so excited to announce that if all goes according to plan the LIVE safaris from Djuma will be back on WildEarth at 06h30 (CAT) on 17th August 2011. 

Tara, Marc and Sebastien will be presenting, directing and operating the camera on the Ganda and will be doing so under the auspices of Djuma Game Reserve. As most of you know Safari Television was no longer able to afford to continue running the LIVE safaris in the way that they had and was forced to stop broadcasting. Djuma very kindly, and very courageously, stepped up and has agreed to cover the costs of operating these safaris for 3 months, in order to give us all an opportunity to make them viable. 

What does that mean, 'make them viable'? Well simply put it means that WE need to work together to increase the viewership of the safaris and the Djuma Waterhole Cam to the point that the Internet advertising served on these streams produces at least enough revenue to cover the operating costs of the safaris and the waterhole. The good news is that it is much cheaper for Djuma to operate this broadcast than Safari Television because they own the land and have an existing lodge, which means some of the costs are reduced or removed. However, we would still need to about double the current viewership. 

WE need your help to promote these cams, and are excited that so many people have said that they will help. Over the past few weeks WE have received many many ideas and suggestions and we have been having numerous internal discussions figuring out how best to proceed. Talking to Jurie at Djuma we have narrowed down a few key things that we think can make the difference and substantially increase the viewership of this amazing broadcast. They are: (a) embedding the cams in as many high traffic sites as possible, (b) running several Google Adwords campaigns, (c) getting as much press coverage as possible, (d) encouraging you to sell T-shirts and curios (where you keep all the money) but that promote Djuma and WildEarth, (e) providing branded buttons and banners to sites to promote the cams, (f) getting the streams into as many schools as possible and (g) as much social media campaigning as possible.

After the incredible success of the zoomie volunteer community (more than 40 volunteers) that control the Pete's Pond and Djuma Waterhole cameras, we have decided to build a new promotion community based on the same Yahoo group system. I will be putting out a new Blog on the weekend that will both explain each of the various promotional ideas in much more detail as well as explain how you can volunteer to be a part of the teams that will tackle each approach.

The first stage is get everybody that wants to be a part of this drive to make the safaris sustainable into the group, and organise exactly what we are going to do and how. WE don't want this to become an uncoordinated affair where the wrong messages are communicated or where we are all working at cross purposes to each other. So please make sure that you do volunteer and join up with everyone else and work together in teams. Also, we must make sure that we don't start promoting before the safaris are actually back on air. There is no point in driving traffic to a player where there is no broadcast. We are aiming for the 17th August, but there are some things that are not in our direct control (e.g. the radio network from Djuma to Hoedspruit) that has to be finalised before then. So lets get everybody (that volunteers) into the group, make sure we all understand everything and be ready to leap into action the minute the safaris start up again. More info in a few days ...

Thanks for all your ideas and emails of support. You truly are a very special community of viewers and I am sure that together WE can make these safaris successful enough that they will be broadcasting on WildEarth from Djuma for many years to come.

-Graham

Hello all,

I have read through all your comments and questions and want to take this opportunity to address some of your questions and look at it a bit more from a WildEarth perspective as well.

As many of you know WildEarth is majority owner of Safari Television, but the two are separate companies. Therefore while this situation will have its impact, it will not result in WildEarth stopping its other activities.

I thought I'd write this in the form of a Q&A based on the most often seen questions.



Q: Will this affect other cameras on WildEarth.tv?

A: No, it will not. Safari Television is its own company and is the company that is stopping its operations. WildEarth will continue to operate and broadcast the other cameras on its platform, including the cam at Gowrie Dam which is owned and operated by Djuma (with support from WildEarth and the zoomies who control and move the camera).



Q: Who will be affected by this?

A: As Safari Television will completely stop operating and close down it will affect everybody at Safari Television. That means Marc, Tara, Herman, Sebastien, Craig, Siphiwe, Cynthia, Carol, and Will.



Q: Will archives remain accessible?

A: Yes, all recorded footage will remain accessible.



Q: Will the safaris never return?

A: Safari Television is ceasing its operations at the end of this month. This is final and unfortunately cannot be changed. Having said that, we are all passionate about these safaris and will certainly not give up on looking for ways to bring them back to you. We hope to be able to, at some time in the future, rise from the ashes and restart the drives. We will certainly try very hard to find a way to do this, but if it happens it will not be through Safari Television.



Q: Should we send money to initiatives that are posted by others to collect funds to keep the safaris going?

A: No, Safari Television currently has not been approached by nor has agreements with anybody for raising funds from donations. Any such efforts posted might be legitimate attempts to help, but the internet is also full of people with less noble intentions. We therefore discourage sending money to any such initiatives as it will not help and might even hinder future efforts to bring the drives back.



Q: Could switching to a subscription-based model provide enough revenue to keep this going?

A: No, unfortunately generating enough subscription revenue to cover the costs for even a limited safari operation is not feasible. Broadcasting a safari is expensive, it requires much more than some salaries and an internet connection. Even assuming the safari would have many times the number of viewers they have now and that all of them would all be willing to pay for a subscription, a subscription model would not cover these.



Q: Is there anything else we can do to keep the safaris going?

A: Unfortunately not at this time. We will certainly not give up on finding a different way to broadcast the safaris in the future, but we ask that you give us a bit of time to work through everything involved in the closing down of Safari Television's operations which is inevitable. We promise that once that is behind us we'll work hard on bringing safaris back in one form or another. No promises, other than that we'll try hard!



I'm sure there will be many more questions after this, or maybe there were some that I missed for this blog. I will attempt to answer those in a future blog.

--Peter

WildEarth is super excited to announce our partnership with Ustream.tv


For the next few months WildEarth will be exclusively re-broadcasting our LIVE streams on the Ustream platform (as well as at wildearth.tv of course). Many of you have been watching some of our broadcasts on Justin.tv, YouTube and DailyMotion, but for a while these will not be active. The idea is to work exclusively with Ustream to build a large audience of LIVE wildlife viewers together.


Ustream and the Raptor Resource Project broke records in the past few months with the now world famous Decorah Eagles webcam. We hope to do even better with Ustream's new multi-view, which allows you to switch from one WildEarth stream to another right inside the player!