THE HISTORY OF HOME OF TV NOSTALGIA
Ever had that moment when you have a mental flash back of a TV show or character but could not put a name to it? Well, I had that moment plenty of times and spent hours looking through the net looking for the name or show information. Thinking to myself if only there was a website that listed information on TV shows from the past with information and images for people to look back at and reminisce. There were only a few basic outdated looking sites that were running only offering people a little information, but nothing more at the time.
After a few hours of going through various ideas for names and coming up with logo ideas, I had come up with Retro TV. I then turned to Wix which I was already using to design websites at the time and started to put basic ideas together, grouping TV shows by year and putting them into alphabetical order. The basic idea was there the graphics were basic and looking back it looked crap to be honest, but it was a start. I then moved onto social media setting up the twitter and facebook accounts where I noticed that there was a RTV account set up already, RTV standing for Retro TV. RTV was a TV channel based in America, which shows classic TV Shows. I carried on building the website and adding to the facebook page and people were starting to like what I was doing. At the same time though there was confusion between RTV and my Retro TV with people asking us about TV schedules and then being asked about the website. There wasonly one thing for it, a major rebrand and image change of the website.
The following day after going through checking what names were already in use, I had come
up with Home of TV Nostalgia. Simple, it stands out, and is catchy if people want to know
about TV nostalgia they would come to the home. The new logo was created a big improvement on the last and now for the big task was the redesign of the website. I started by sketching various ideas on paper working out layouts and how to make sure the site could handle the 1000s of pages and images without grinding it to a halt. A few days later I had the upgraded site layout, working menus, added graphics and it was all looking professional. To handle the mass amount of data I would be adding the website its self is made up of 26 separate sites all linked together smoothly also split into two sections TV nostalgia and Scifi TV Nostalgia as the scifi fan base I huge I thought a site of its own is a must.
I was looking at the website thinking how can I improve it and what new features could be added to make it stand out and unlike any other. Being on twitter I noticed that alot of TV celebrities I watched growing up over the years were active and talking to fans online... This gave me an idea. I put together a few questions and sent a message to Chris Jarvis on twitter a CBBC presenter I had watched over the years asking if I could interview him. I was thinking this is a long shot and unsure if I would get a reply but instantly Chris replied! He agreed to an interview and gave me contact details to ask him the questions. I was over the moon I had secured the first interview for the website Chris soon after got the answers back to me and I put them on the site for all to see under the Asks section, which is now set up to interview TV celebrities past and present for all their fans to see. I thanked Chris for his time, and added him a banner to the website advertising his live show ’Chris and Pui’ as a thankyou. Since then I have interviewed such as; Gaby Roslin, Pat Sharp, Emma Forbes, Gail Porter and many more all giving up their time to answer my questions and improve the website.
Due to not being able to travel around the world or across the UK for these interviews with people busy working, filming or traveling they all happened online. I noticed that a few celebs I had interviewed were attending comic cons and events not too far from me so there was only one thing for it on the road we went to meet them.
Home of TV Nostalgia Visits was born. I had worked in the events industry in the past for the city council arts and events team so know about organising events. I was thinking why not film our day at the event for all to see edit the videos into a recap video and do a review of our experience attending on the day.
We headed to BritSci-Fi on the 09-10 March 2013 The National Space Centre Leicester a scifi event showcasing the best of British scifi and the space centre a fitting location. This was our first visit to a event of this type and it was great to see so many fans in cosplay and attractions all in one place. We also made alot of new friends that day from cosplayers to the team at Basestar events Mark and Tom who organised the event who all loved our recap video of the day and review of the 5 Star event.
After adding many of the cosplayers on facebook and keeping in contact with them I decided to set up a dedicated page on the website. The cosplay section was now in place featuring people from all over the world that cosplay TV characters I created a custom banner for each person which took time but I did not mind at all and gave them a profile space to tell people about them self linked to their social media or group page.
The website was now getting full of content I had completed work on the 50s and 60s section and was progressing through the rest slowly. The interviews section was full of stars from TV shows like Dr Who, Farscape, Only fools and horses and more. We were also now keeping in contact with the people we interviewed seeing them regularly at events and keeping in contact too.
End of the day there will always be more to add with new TV shows coming out every day and news stories to publish, but I am not going to rush adding them to the site at all as it is only me running the website 1000s of pages, social media pages, editing events recap videos and planning interviews which I all do when I am not working in my free time and I make no money from it at all. Why do I do it? Because I enjoy it meeting new people seeing peoples reaction to the website and the recap videos when I have filmed them at events. The press has also started acknowledging my work also now with my event videos from Stoke Con Trent being featured on many press websites such as local paper the sentinel. The recap videos which once only got 50+ views now reaching 1500+ views in a week as long as people enjoy watching them ill keep filming more.
