New YouTube channel for multicultural Ireland
TVIE is a new YouTube channel set up to provide community and socially-relevant content in Ireland.
“I’m a huge believer in community TV,” explained Declan Cassidy, the film maker behind the channel. “At a time when it’s increasingly hard to know what information can be trusted, community television, with content created by the community, can be that trusted source. TVIE is an online channel for those who don’t have a community tv channel like DCTV in Dublin on CCTV in Cork.”
TVIE launched with the online premiere of Cassidy’s Coimisiún na Meán-funded three-part television series ‘A Finglas Story’, which charts the history of the Dublin suburb from the post-war years of the 1940s, when Finglas was a sleepy rural village, through the ambitious housing schemes that Dublin Corporation rolled out in the 50s and 70s, through to the multicultural suburb of today. The series was made for Dublin Community Television and has been showing there, at Channel 802 on Virgin Media.
“The first episode premiered at 3pm on Sunday, September 24 and, within a day, it had been watched 965 times with 55 people subscribing to the channel,” revealed Cassidy. “It’s a promising start. It means that those who can’t access DCTV – such as those Irish in other countries or without Virgin Media access, can see the content.”
An advantage of an online community channel is the connectivity with social media, according to the film maker.
“I posted a short TikTok announcing that ‘A Finglas Story’ was premiering on the channel,” he explained. “In a day it had over 12,000 views with some of the comments showing that TikTokkers had followed up and watched the episode on TikTok.”
Cassidy will premiere a new half-hour show every Sunday at 3pm on TVIE.
“Next Sunday will be Episode 2 of A Finglas Story with Episode 3 the following Sunday. Then , for the six Sundays following that, there will be the six episodes of my series “Romancing Ireland” – a multicultural food series that sees a Brazilian, an Italian, a French guy, a Romanian and a Spaniard each challenged to cook a national favourite dish of their country, as voted by their online community. The twist is that they can only use Irish produce,” explained Cassidy. “The idea is to showcase the amazing produce that we have in this country and to show that, with a little imagination, you can have world-class food without relying on carbon-costly imports.”
TVIE YouTube channel can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@tvie
