Our annual report of the last year and what God has done with trueGOD Television Networks as of February 28, 2014.
Although it may seem strange to see the year in review now, trueGOD.tv was born in February, 6 years ago. Therefore this is our anniversary month. We have been very quiet this year, but very busy. There have been numerous accomplishments, victories and difficulties as well, but God is faithful and has strengthened our faith. We are in His hands and this is His work. We are more confident of this fact than ever.
He has both assured us and confirmed His assurance over the last year. This has been the easiest year as far as finances and growth that we have ever had. As far as growth is concerned, here is what God has done in the last year.
Web traffic: 1,923,616 page views
Unique Visitors: 371,290
Visits: 720,616
Countries: 194 countries, protectorates and islands, between 30-60 daily.
Visiting languages: 142
Cities: 8,600
Video Files: Over 85,000
Alexa Global Rank: 114,461 Globally, 24,697 USA
(Note: out of over 1 billion active websites in 2013 according to Netcraft.)
Alexa Rank among Christian TV broadcasters: 9th
Alexa Rank among Internet Only Christian TV broadcasters: 4th
Devices Connecting:
Desktop: 66.5%
Tablet: 20.31%
Mobile: 13.9%
Accomplishments
Here are the accomplishments that we have made over the last year. There are currently about 110 channels on trueGOD.tv. The number of videos viewed over 2013 are 1,414,760.
FCC requirements for Internet T/V (Television and Video)
We have met about four United States FCC deadlines over the last year and a half including compliance with the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010 (CVAA).
September 30, 2012: Pre-recorded video programming that is not “edited for the Internet” must be captioned on the Internet if it is shown on TV with captions on or after September 30, 2012.
March 30, 2013: Live and near-live video programming must be captioned on the Internet if it is shown on TV with captions on or after March 30, 2013.
September 30, 2013: Pre-recorded video programming that is substantially edited for the Internet must be captioned if it is shown on TV with captions on or after September 30, 2013.
January 1, 2014: Closed Caption decoder user styling for captioned players. All players subject to closed captions shall implement the following captioning functionality:
(1) Presentation.
(2) Character color. Select from a palette of at least 8 colors including: white, black, red, green, blue, yellow, magenta, and cyan.
(3) Character opacity.
(4) Character size.
(5) Fonts.
(6) Caption background color and opacity. Select from a palette of at least 8 colors including: white, black, red, green, blue, yellow, magenta, and cyan. Ability to vary the opacity of the caption background and select between opaque, semi-transparent, and transparent background opacities.
(7) Character edge attributes. Select character edge attributes including: no edge attribute, raised edges, depressed edges, uniform edges, and drop shadowed edges.
(8) Caption window color. Select from a palette of at least 8 colors including: white, black, red, green, blue, yellow, magenta, and cyan. Ability to vary the opacity of the caption window and select between opaque, semi-transparent, and transparent background opacities.
(9) Language.
(10) Preview and setting retention. Preview default and user selection and retain such settings the default caption configuration until changed by the user.
New Features
We have launched seven Internet radio stations and have more planned in the near future.
More speed optimizations. We have also changed to dedicated servers for players. They are now independent of the web servers that are used to handle the trueGOD.tv website. This allows us to optimize the web servers separate from the players, giving both systems only the tools they need and we can better add resources as demand requires.
We changed our live streaming from an origin / edge server model to an origin / CDN model. CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. This enables us to ramp up to 10,000’s of concurrent viewers with little or no additional servers being added to our platform. The load is handled at the CDN. This is the same way major networks and movie studios broadcast. It also lays the groundwork for faster delivery and App broadcasting.
Upgrades to our hardware and technology.
We have been praying for upgrades to our camera equipment, and God has been faithful. We can now record our own productions in HD.
We have hundred’s of thousands of files stored in 3 different cloud platforms. Over 13 Terabytes of video files alone. That is 13,000 gigabytes of video footage.
We have also made many changes to our server platform and moved to NGINX as our primary web server software. NGINX is currently one of the fastest and most secure web server technologies available today. It is the web server software running about 19% of all websites and used by some of the biggest as well. Sites like WordPress.com, Pinterest.com, Tumblr.com, Instagram.com use NGINX so we are in good company.
We continue to make improvements on our HTML5 platform and can serve TV style Christian ad content on non-flash mobile and smartTV devices. Ministries with channels now have free access to our banner / video advertising server for managing content with their channels or Video-On-Demand (VOD) content.
Responsive Social Live Page
A new feature was created for live streaming ministries that have channels. It was the first in our industry. No other Christian streaming services had anything like it when we launched. It is a “social, feedback, customized, streaming page that is ‘responsive’. ” Man, that is a mouth full. We call it “responsive social live.” The term “responsive” means that the page resizes itself and the elements change based upon the device viewing it. So it is optimized for mobile, tablet (both portrait and landscape modes), desktop and smartTVs. Just like our player technology, it automatically knows the device and screen size, and just works! We also customize the look to match the website of the church, ministry or TV network. Because the entire page is served from our server network, it can handle much larger number of viewers than churches that have our player on their site.
App Development
We have been busy building Apps as well. These are closed to the public currently, but some will be exposed this year. Apps are targeted at specific devices and platforms. We build custom Apps for ministries and TV networks that broadcast using our platform.
Expansion of Prayer support for trueGOD.tv
We have started an intercessors team to pray trueGOD through the current and future challenges. This small but important group help to hold us before God to be directed and guided in fulfilling the work of the Great Commission and the specific work of Christian Internet Television, which we were commanded to do eight years ago. Today, everyone knows all television is moving to the Internet. That was not the case when God told us.
Live Streaming
This is one of the most important features of trueGOD Television. It also takes quite a bit of our time. We broadcast live for churches, ministries and TV stations across America, from coast to coast. Some churches have achieve the following while broadcasting on our platform. Each ministry can view the logs at anytime and even view their traffic in real time, as it is happening.
- One church received over 10,200 unique viewers on 1 Sunday broadcasting.
- More viewers watched online (over 5,000) during a service – that was more than the seating in their sanctuary.
- A church received 436% growth in online viewers during the time they have broadcast with us. From 15,268 in May 2012 to 66,599 viewers in January 2014. Another church received over 300% growth.
- One ministry receives about 34 countries logging in to view their Sunday broadcasts.
- Another church has received over 930,327 views on their live broadcast and over 1,000,000 with their video on demand and live channels combined over the last 2 years with trueGOD.tv.
- We have broadcast numerous top tier Christian events LIVE over the last year (many in HD).
- We broadcast the Legacy Conference for the 4th year in a row – the last 2 years in HD.
- We broadcast a conference for Christianity Today Magazine LIVE.
- We broadcast the Bible Prophecy Conference LIVE for the 2nd year in a row.
- A TV station added over 10,000 videos with FCC captions over the last year to our platform.
- In addition, we have broadcast concerts, album launch parties, conference rebroadcasts and more.
The Future
More of the same; listening to God, implementing the upgrades, changes and technology as He directs; watching the industry, church and world; Praying for careful direction and provision; adding more languages, content, and devices to broadcast on; broadcasting to every Internet connected video device with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Simple. (Not really.)
God continues to do “exceedingly, abundantly, above anything we can ask or think…” We humbly thank Him for His hand on this work. Our desire is to do this His way, not man’s way. Some years ago He warned us that He does not need “another Christian TV network.” So, if we don’t do this His way, it will not continue. Over the last year, we have seen numerous Christian Internet TV networks disappear. As this world becomes darker, we need more lights not less. Please pray for us in this work.
Yours in Christ Service,
Franklin Mayfield
Ministry Director,
trueGOD Television Networks
