How wonky.tv survived 30 years of satellite broadcasting without anyone noticing
A retrospective on two decades of being quietly, persistently present on Hotbird 13°E.
It's 1994. The internet is a dial-up connection that sounds like a dying robot. Television is still something you watch at a specific time because nobody has thought of recording it yet. Into this world steps wonky.tv — a five-channel satellite network funded by a man who had a surplus of transponder time and a deficit of better ideas.
The original pitch was simple: five channels, each doing something slightly different, all broadcast 24 hours a day, all entirely self-funded. There was no investor deck. There was no Series A. There was just a dish pointed at a satellite and a prayer.
"We didn't launch because we wanted to change television. We launched because we had a spare transponder and couldn't figure out how to sell it." — Martin Pugh, Founder and Managing Director, wonky Broadcasting Ltd.
Three decades later, wonky.tv still occupies channels 841 through 845. Nobody knows exactly how many people watch. The audience measurement companies have tried. They've given up. The latest report simply says "indeterminate but non-zero."
And that's fine. Because wonky.tv was never about ratings. It was about the principle that if you can broadcast something, you should broadcast something. Even if what you're broadcasting is four hours of documentary footage about queues. Especially then.