18 Doughty Street

18 Doughty Street was a British political Internet-based broadcaster that hosted a webcast as its chief product. It began broadcasting at 18:55 on 10 October 2006, from its studio at 18 Doughty Street in the Bloomsbury area of London, and ceased broadcasting at 23:00 on Thursday 8 November 2007. It claimed to be Britain's first Internet-based TV station.

Doughty Media Limited was funded by Stephan Shakespeare and its core presenters at launch included Iain Dale, Tim Montgomerie, Rena Valeh, Zoe Phillips and Donal Blaney. Alex Story, a director of the company at the time of the launch, was the creator of 18 Doughty Street. He wrote the concept on which the station was based, built the studio, and initially organised the production of the channel. Alex developed the idea of creating a news platform that would challenge the dominance of terrestrial TV stations over the course of 2005 when he stood for parliament in Denton & Reddish. Over the course of the campaign, he noticed the wide cultural chasm between main stream news channels and the people. He took his idea of an on-line TV station to Stephan Shakespeare during the first half of 2006.

The station used live video streaming technology in a Windows format to webcast from 19:00 until midnight from Monday to Friday, with all programmes being made available to stream again shortly after the programme had aired. Due to the technology of the time, viewers could not download archived videos to their computer or portable device directly from the site, although a video podcast service of all archive videos was offered shortly before the station ceased broadcasting.

Although it called itself a "TV station", legally it was not, so did not operate under the Ofcom Broadcasting Code, which requires "due impartiality" and prevents politicians being newsreaders, interviewers or reporters in any news programme.

At the point of launch, there were four directors of the company, Alex Story, Iain Dale, Tim Montgomerie and Stephan Shakespeare, all Conservative Party members and self-described conservatives, but did not represent the Conservative Party in an official capacity on the station. In late 2006 Alex Story left as a Director of the company, followed by the resignations of Tim Montgomerie around March 2007 and of Donal Blaney in October 2007, followed by Iain Dale later in around December 2007. The latter three were said to be leaving to focus on other projects. For Alex Story, the aim of the channel was to provide an intellectual and cultural platform to take-on the political orthodoxy of the time; for other directors, the channel was to be narrowly focused on the politics of Westminster.

...
Wikipedia