VSB TV News may no longer be on television, but the programme is alive and well online.

While VSB TV 11 ceased broadcasting last August due to financial constraints, the news team has been quietly producing their nightly news programme for their website, www.vsb.bm, since October.

“It’s the best kept secret in broadcasting in Bermuda,” news director Bryan Darby said.

Mr Darby said that when the television station closed the news team continued to produce the VSB radio news but longed for a return to television.

“It’s not our world,” he said. “Take the America’s Cup. That has to be covered visually. If we were just sitting there with the rest of the media with a radio tape, I think we would all go mad.

“We like the TV, we like the filming, and we still had cameras going out to all the events and using the sound of the camera.

“One day Earl Basden came in and said that we have to do something different and inspired us, inspired me to try the online thing and just keep going. It was important that everyone said ‘yes’ and everyone said ‘yes’.”

Mr Basden, the sports editor for VSB, said the move from broadcast to online was an obvious move forward, particularly because they were already using the cameras.

“We were producing a nightly newscast, and when that newscast was taken off the air, we were still producing the same quality of reporting with the same equipment, so it made sense to me that if we were not going to put it on TV, use the same stuff and put it online,” Mr Basden said.

He said that there were initially some hesitancy to moving the product online, but those fears were alleviated once the team saw their efforts come to fruition.

“Once they were able to see their product online, the transition has become a lot smoother,” Mr Basden said. “It took a little while but I think the reality of seeing it gave us a boost and livened us up.

“The people I’ve spoken to who know it’s on are delighted to have a second option, and the fact that it’s 24 hours a day means they don’t have to race home. You can got home, you can watch it the next morning, you can rewatch it. If they only want to watch one part or the whole thing, it’s open to them.”

Mr Darby said the service has not previously been publicised because they wanted to first prove they could consistently produce a quality, marketable and sustainable product.

“We have had to learn the new way, but it’s become second nature to us now,” he said. “We’ve turned Charles Webbe into a newscaster, which is something he never expected.

“Gradually people began to pick it up, and we have had some great responses, both overseas and locally. It’s picking up nicely.”

While the first videos garnered only a handful of views, some of the more recent videos have received more than three hundred views despite the lack of marketing for the service.

With the team now able to promote the service, Mr Darby said he hopes to see the number of viewers continue to build. If successful, he said he hopes that VSB News could return to television.

“Now we are essentially in a new trial period,” he said. “We are trying to show that advertising and people will come. At the end of that, we would then like to go to people like CableVision and World on Wireless and see the plausibility of not only putting it on our website, but also on one of the channels. We give them the memory stick, and they just have to plug it in.

“Once the advertising comes in we can also build a new website, but the thing that I dream of is that one day, not too far in the future, we will be back on live television and our sacrifices will be rewarded.”