Pod3.tv Ltd, the UK’s award winning video podcast WebTV company, is pleased to announce the appointment of Oliver Rothschild as its non-executive Chairman.

Neil Fairbrother Founder and CEO of pod3.tv Ltd, welcomed the appointment saying:
"We are delighted that Oliver Rothschild has agreed to join pod3.tv as Chairman. We believe that Oliver will bring significant experience and international credibility to the Board of pod3.tv as we rapidly expand our range of content, both home grown and sourced from third parties”.

I recently represented "media" at a career fair at Dr Challoners High School in Amersham Bucks. Once again I was blown away by the "Yoof of Today"... the Careers Fair was well attended and I spoke myself hoarse as I had so many young folk asking about careers in the "Media". From 14 to 18, male and female, there were technical oriented folk as well as creative folk wondering what they need to do to get into the industry.

It was quite an overwhelming experience.

This was swiftly followed by coffee and cakes with TVU, to discuss how Media Studies could include podcasts, video podcasts, production, design and content. Apparently there are a lot of ex-bankers, and other folk, that have recently been made redundant queuing up to retrain as teachers, it being regarded as a "safe" option.

The BBC, ITV and Channel 4 all have an on-line presence, notably the iPlayer. For some time now they've been collaborating on a Video on Demand project called Kangaroo whereby their content is made available from one jointly run location.

Yesterday the Competition Commission stopped the project in its tracks as in their view Kangaroo would present too much of a threat to competition for independent VOD suppliers, such as pod3.tv. There had been an interim report published in December, which expressed concerns about this, but in the opinion of the Competition Commission had not been sufficiently addressed.

"After detailed and careful consideration, we have decided that this joint venture would be too much of a threat to competition in this developing market and has to be stopped," said Peter Freeman, Chairman of the Commission.

We support young people in as many ways as we can - work experience and the Young Enterprise scheme.

The group we currently support has launched a "Fairy Training School" where young girls can "qualify" to be a "real" Fairy... and their local paper has just published this article about them!
A great result, well done Noire Crafts!

If you're in or around the Amersham area, and have a young girl that would like to become a fully certified fairy, do contact us here (neil@pod3.tv) and we'll pass your details on to Noire.

Wo! What's all that white stuff doing piled up outside my door? Last time we had snow like this it took 3 hours to do the 15 miles to the studio... so I think I'll hunker down at home for the morning before venturing out.

I do need to get to the studio as we have an important meeting tomorrow morning which we need to prep for and print off some documents and so on...

...but at least my whizzy new broadband service from BeThere is helping me crack on. Although well short of the promised 11Mbps (delivers about 3.5Mbps downstream) it's been a painless experience swapping supplier.

What a tiring day yesterday was... up before the dawn cracked, arrived Chapel Down by 9:00. Planned the shoot with Darren of Zest PR, Richard and Frazer, MD of Chapel Down wine. Richard is a natural in front of the camera and did a great job interviewing Frazer.... then to business in the kitchen.

Richard is a whirlwind of energy, a force of nature... Adam had his work cut out keeping the Z1 on the action... and it was very warm in the immaculate kitchen. His staff were preparing for the day so we had to dodge around Richard's team, who were very obliging...

The risotto was delicious, but we didn't have time to try the pork belly as the sole fisherman had called in to say his ETA was about 30 mins with the fresh catch and we had to get our skates on...

... it's always great to be on a boat, Richard did a quick interview, Roger bagged some fresh fish for supper, then back to the restaurant for a welcome lunch before the closing interview with Richard.

Tomorrow we shoot the next in the series of Made in Great Britain, this time with Richard Phillips in Tenterden Kent. Here's what Richard said we'd be doing:

"I have spoken to my fish supplier and he has arranged for us to go to the quay in Rye to meet the boat when it comes in to see the fish being landed, and talk about the fish with him then take some off him to cook. That will be early afternoon so we will do the cooking in the morning one meat dish and one fish dish. In the meat dish I will use Chapel Down wine, which we can associate with the chat to the wine guys then a Rye bay scallop dish which will then work in conjunction with the fisherman."

Looking forward to this!

If you'd like to sponsor or advertise in this show, contact sales@pod3.tv and we'll take you through how video podcast advertising can help you reach a valuable target audience.

Enjoyed reviewing the rushes from yesterday's filming, having imported or digitised them into the editing system in the studio. We didn't get quite enough shots of the car zooming down country lanes, not that we need much, but we need some. If the weather's nice tomorrow afternoon we'll dash over to Henley with camera and take some extra footage...

We're chipping away at a couple of proposals we need to turn around by the end of the week, drew up a draft contract with our new Chef for Made in Great Britain, made more progress with another contract, reviewed a technology road map and started to plan our strategy for an investor meeting next week.

So today saw us filming another episode of pod3Classics and to make up for Friday's disappointments we dined in fine style at the French Horne in Sonning - oysters followed by steak and Kidney pud.

The car in question was a Mille Miglia 1.5l Aston Martin which even today is good for 80mph and even 100mph with judicious use of the gas pedal... but note the brake and gas are vice versa compared with modern cars, so one has to focus when driving this beast...

Richard drove with great gusto around the Berkshire lanes, the exhaust made a terrific noise, the body shook and rattled and the wheel needed significant heaving to get around corners, making even being a passenger a visceral experience....

On top of this my new broadband connection and router are up and working at home, so I'm now a very happy bunny - a great way to start the week!

Having create an award winning webTV business using commercially sponsored video podcasts, we've expanded our service offering to include the production of audio and video podcasts for other people.

We're currently producing a series of video podcasts for a large multinational software company for use in their sales channel, so that their resellers are kept abreast of new product developments, sales strategies and tools. This is an excellent use of this technology - the content can be watched at any time and anywhere, on Mac, PC, video iPod, iPodTouch, iPhone or AppleTV. As we bring TV production techniques, these 20 min shows are not the standard "corporate promo", instead they are presenter-led which bring the subject matter to life.