InterTV: the independent voice of Inter fans
Italy: Twenty minutes with studio guests and the rest is dedicated to phone calls. This is the informative format of several TV programmes on a 10 hour-a-day live timetable, broadcast by InterTV, the independent Italian regional TV station in Lombardy devoted to Inter football team fans, writes Italian Correspondent, Roberto Landini.
“The official TV channels, it’s known, are usually encrypted, and pay-TV, they can’t simply open telephone lines and get the opinion of the public, since everything is filtered, they are the official voice of the team. On the contrary we may declare everything the team supporter thinks.”
This is just one of the many replies given in an interview by the owner of InterTV, Corrado Fumagalli. After almost a year since the beginning of this adventure Fumagalli has created a TV channel based on a series of news and current affairs TV channel thoroughly devoted to the opinion and events and rumours around Italian soccer team Inter.
It is officially authorised but at the same time unofficial, since it means to be just “the voice of the public” and nothing more.
Corrado Fumagalli comments: “I would have never guessed one single soccer season could be enough to enter the fan DNA. Just for an example the “Curva Nord” which has never talked to any journalist is is constant contact with us some of the managing staff have been guests here and a lot of Inter Clubs have been constantly here to comment and discuss in our transmissions. And we may count on 300,000 Auditel contacts.
“One only problem needs to be still resolved, the digital terrestrial transmission here, though we have a very good signal obliges us to use a very high remote control number (676 channel) which is so far away from the usual 20 favourites.”
From the technical facilities, the channel has a main studio in which three sets are available for the various programmes. The main studio is equipped with three robotic cameras Hitachi HDHV30 3 CMOS and Pan Tilt heads from Eagle PT50, LTO ground monitor, and all the equipments have been supplied and installed by specialised company Euro Video System from Udine.
From the control room the four cameras are remote controlled by Netwk software and managed by a Newtec switcher. All are aired through the Newtec live control LC11, and among other equipments there are three contribution video platforms displayed on monitors and editing software by Grass Valley, a multiviewer including a return control, audio digital console by VT5 and also Behringer equipments, then Edius by Grass Valley is the choice for post production suites, an AEQ telephone hybrid, Sennheiser EH350 headphones, two sat receivers for the incoming football matches feeds to be commented live, audio processor by Orban 6200, a Kramer audio switch, a 2TB tapeless recording system used for all the programmes which are re-broadcast in different time slots through an appropriate software which encapsulates everything for playlist replicas. Air Box I the software used for playout side by side with the legal machine which stores all programmes broadcast for 120 days, a Tittle box for graphics, logos and SMS.
All post production areas are equipped with Edius by Grass Valley software installed on two PC workstations plus a 12 core Mac 12 devoted to engaging graphics, stings and logos.
www.InterTV.it