Building in Public - I promised my wife I would never do this again.

In 2014 I was building a new business. I wanted to create a 24/7 online TV station with the goal of providing locals with continuous local content - sport, news, lifestyle shows, quiz shows, short films - it was ambitious but possible.

On a cool night in September 2015 we officially launched the first regional online TV station, with guest VIPs, volunteer hosts, champagne and lots of support from local businesses.

During this time, I stumbled across a podcast called StartUp by an ex-radio announcer, Alex Blumberg, who had made a journalistic name for himself producing and contributing to a popular radio show, This American Life. 

Alex had decided his passion for podcasting could become his career - and so he ambitiously started a company that would eventually become known as Gimlet Media - a podcast studio that would ultimately produce a slate of monetised content in the emerging medium of digital podcasting. More than just this though - Alex wanted to document the whole experience in a way that would only seem natural, through a podcast. Hence StartUp became a regular part of my content digestion in 2014 and into 2015. It's the first time I had heard the expression "building in public." 

And it was so fascinating to hear the trials and tribulations of one creator giving it a go in real time. It was even more thrilling for me, because at that time I could relate to his vision. We were both starting something that was relatively new to the world. In my mind, it was only a matter of time before terrestrial TV would be switched off altogether and internet TV became the norm. The major broadcasters had started promoting their own streaming platforms and my goal was to become a regional version of them.

Photo credit: Emma O'Donnell - Wagga Socials

I even made international headlines later that year after HBO contacted us citing our slogan was too similar to theirs. Ours was "It's not TV, it's dot TV" and HBO's was "It's not TV, it's HBO." I've still got the letter I sent telling them I would continue to use this slogan, as it came from my head and was not stolen from them. Turns out they hadn't actually registered the use of their slogan at that time in Australia and the whole thing went away quite quickly.

My intention was also to roll out a version of WAGGAWAGGATV across the country with every town with more than 50,000 people having their very own local online station on a platform called REECHTV. You would eventually be able to tune a small web device plugged in near your smart TV into a free digital channel and then search the local interface for your postcode.

Of course, in 2020, you-know-what hit and all our plans were thwarted.

Now, in 2026 I'm doing something I promised my wife I would never do again - building a new platform to solve a problem in my industry. The problem of having sustainable capital and investment funds within the screen sector. And, to make it all the more challenging, I'm going to take a leaf from Alex Blumberg's book and build it all in public. That's right, we are launching a podcast, which is also a video series which will be published in late August this year. We already have a fantastic line-up of guests - one of them happens to be the guy who was behind the podcast, “StartUp”. 

Co-host Pirie Martin is busy finalising the artwork for our series, and each week we reveal a little behind the scenes of how we are producing the podcast and how we are building an audience in public - because that is part of the engine of what we are building with the larger company - the bigger eco-system - audience building happens from the start.

Next week we will hopefully have our socials and branding established so you can follow along on the various platforms you will be able to find us on.