The following is taken from the web page,
http://www.narrativetv.com/ntnstory.htm

A few described videos may be viewed on the web with a soundcard, pentium
computer, and Realplayer media player located at the following address,
http://www.broadcast.com/television/narrativetv/

One may go directly to The Narrative Television main page located at,

http://www.narrativetv.com/text/index.htm

Start of text.

THE NTN STORY

When Jim Stovall lost the remainder of his eyesight at age 29, he was
determined to never leave the controlled environment of his own home again.
In fact, he set aside a room with a telephone, a radio, a television, and a
video cassette player, intending to never venture out of his secured world.
Jim Stovall met Kathy Harper, who is legally blind, at a support group
meeting for blind and visually impaired people. One day while listening to a
video of one of his favorite classic movies, Stovall became frustrated when
he could not follow the story by only hearing the dialogue and sound
effects. He realized that as a blind person there were many visual elements
of the story that he missed, and he thought if he was frustrated by it,
maybe other visually impaired individuals were as well.
Through research, Stovall and Harper learned that there are 13 million
people in the United States who have visual impairments severe enough to
limit their enjoyment of movies and television programming. They began to
develop a plan to make programs accessible to visually impaired people by
adding the voice of a narrator describing the visual elements of the story.
Even though they knew nothing about the technology it would require to
accomplish such a task, they began working with borrowed equipment to
produce the first few narrative soundtracks. Jim and Kathy then planned to
add the narrative soundtracks to the existing movie audio. Experts in the
television industry told them their plan would never work, but unfailing in
their tenacity, they eventually found someone who would help them try, and
the videos came together just as they had expected. Less than one year
later, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded NTN with
an Emmy for technology that has expanded the use of television.
Today, NTN has become one of the fastest-growing networks ever. It has over
1,200 broadcast and cable affiliates, reaching 25 million homes in the U.
S., and NTN is shown in eleven foreign countries.
ARTICLE ABOUT THE VOICE OF NTN, OUR NARRATOR, KEVIN MEYER
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Narrative Television Network
5840 South Memorial Drive
Suite 312
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74145-9082
(918) 627-1000
Fax (918) 627-4101
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
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© 1998 Narrative Television Network
Hosted by Internet International


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