What a stressful year 2020 has been for all us in everyday life - thank you for continuing to be with us throughout the year. Our 2020 has been a year of changes, with new systems being used, change of several personnel, having to film videos from home, a new redesign of the website, a copyright issue with the Club and huge names involved with NFTV.
We begin with our first major change was how to deal with not going to games, my own personal last game was the 1-0 away win at Southampton in late March, that feels a long time a go - it was, your talking over 9 months, for others it's been longer. The pandemic has hit us all and we had to improvise, we played with a couple of systems and we really liked the look of Streamyard as it was use to use, quicker to get videos out and people on NFTV who weren't skilled at video editing could easily use it with the system based online - so many YouTubers use it because of the ease of it, this platform has been a game changer for us - with out it, we would seriously be struggling to make content at a quick pace.
In the summer we said goodbye to six people in Julita, Rob, Eisha, Paul, Owen and Kyle. The changes were needed for two reasons, the first one being was some of the team - their heart wasn't in Newcastle Fans TV and something had to give, some left on their own accord whilst others were asked about their future, it wasn't fair on half the team grafting whilst others were hardly seen on video, on the website or on social media - so a decision had to be made. The other was a disagreement, whilst one (now ex) member went out on a full attack, the other left gracefully - it was clear who was respected more. Some of the team who left still speak to us, a couple don't - we'll let you work out which people had no hard feelings about departing.
That brought a huge change with five new people joining NFTV, there was huge interest and to whittle it down was incredible tough - Adam, Liam and Brandon joined the Facebook page, with the help of myself and Sam, we had gone from two admins to five which has now pushed the page on to almost 31k followers, which is incredible. On YouTube we brought in Karl and Matt, they've brought in new ideas, a new drive and optimism for both of our YouTube channels. Even the Facebook lads have been heavily involved creating content, which we love. The new lads coming in have lifted the whole morale at NFTV, six months on and it's still buzzing, there's no disagreements, no heated talk, everyone is generally happy for the first time in a long time. I'm personally delighted those lads have got a lift from us and they have given it back. At first everyone was unsure how it would pan out but I never thought people leaving and new folk coming in would lift the place, it really has - that's no disrespect to the previous team, but the changes were needed and everyone at NFTV is delighted they were made. We see it as friendship now.
NFTV also revamped the website, it's had three changes since it's launch in 2017, in-particular in 2020 as it had two changes, a huge personal thank you to former member Owen on improving the previous design, but in the Autumn I wanted to go one step further, I personally revamped the whole site from top to bottom, self educating myself in to web design - it looks slick, more professional and it's easy on the eye - it now looks a proper website. We get a lot of business, media and brands looking at the site, sending messages in to us, also to remember it costs us money have our own site each year.
We bought Wyscout in the summer, a scouting system used by professional clubs to monitor players - it's the biggest purchase NFTV ever made costing a cool £630, it makes us stand out against competitors and we have implemented it in some of videos, however a copyright strike against us made it difficult to produce carefully edited content so it doesn't breach any further copyright. Wyscout content wasn't hit with a strike, this was NUFC away from Wyscout - despite an agreement in place with the head of media, we could use the Club's content if acknowledging where the content came from them - we did on the particular video in question and in the description, the Club went back on their word with us, leaving us with a strike and unable to live stream for three months which affected our views, interaction with viewers and more workload needed. We won't be taking the Club's word anymore, learn from it and produce content away from them but we are delighted we have been able to live stream again since early December.
Finally, we have saw a huge influx of big names on Newcastle Fans TV and our second channel NFTV Extra (which we have also pushed hard) this year ranging from current NUFC players, top journalists, ex players and media personnel such as Matt Ritchie, Henry Winter, Les Ferdinand, current England number one Carly Telford, world champion Savannah Marshall and Pete Graves, there are so many to keep naming. We have hugely improved our online presence and this is thanks to several of factors, the way we structure our videos, how we come across on video, the editing, and the brilliance behind the people getting those interviews - notably Sam for the second half of the year. It makes us immensely proud the names we have had on (Check our collabs section on the site).
Who knows what 2021 will bring for us, you and everyone else - Happy New Year!
Lee and the NFTV team.
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