All systems GOTV

Andrew Mathieson
ADAM Tribe can vividly remember when he could barely swing a video camera without tripping over the lawn mower.
It doesn’t seem that long ago since the man behind Tribe Productions, the parent company of Geelong’s Own Television (GOTV) internet channel, first worked out of a garage in the backyard.
“It was a business you more or less ran out of your bedroom initially,” Adam recalls of 1993.
“Shortly after that we converted the garage – well, half of the garage.
“One half had the mower, the tools and all the other rubbish you collect and the other half had a desk with a computer.
“When we moved next, we only had enough room to expand to three desks and that was crazy enough.”
Slowly it took almost a decade before the media company relocated to just a “shoebox” office in James Street.
Now overlooking bay views from the third floor of a Moorabool Street building, Adam jokes not much has changed.
Sitting at a worn-out board table that’s seen better times, he looks over his shoulder and spells out the next set of plans for the GOTV offices.
“We plan to have a wall put in behind us to make another meeting room,” Adam says, “so I’m going to be in there with the plaster, the nails and the timber myself.”
It’s the sort of honest humour Adam uses to laugh off tags that he’s now a media mogul.
Managing director is just a name on his business card, he explains.
“It’s a great industry to work in but, like any business, it’s hard work – certainly very hands on,” Adam contemplates.
“We’re certainly not high-flyers by any stretch of the imagination.
“I don’t even wear a tie, mate.”
Like his first office, the 39-year-old’s colourful life has been one of two halves.
Adam had studied applied math, English, chemistry and physics during year 12 and was heading toward an engineering degree.
But life hit an unexpected curve – his girlfriend became pregnant and Adam was a father at 19.
“I was a baby with a baby,” he laments.
Desperate to support his new-born son, a few friends in the television industry hooked him up with a job at a high-end production house that served advertising agencies at $850 an hour.
He was now a videotape operator, serving as an editor’s assistant. But, in essence, a naive Adam served a lot of coffee for clients on leather couches rather than rummaging through footage in dark editing suites.
At his next job Adam would eventually meet his wife and GOTV news reporter, Sue Etheridge, at Channel Nine where he rolled up his sleeves on Hey Hey It’s Saturday, A Current Affair and Sale of the Century.
It would kick start a broad editing career including covering five Australian tennis opens, numerous Australian moto and superbike grand prix events, a couple of AFL seasons, the Sydney Olympics and international golf for America’s ABC network.
“It was a great learning curve,” Adam explains.
“The trend back then was also to go freelance, so in the way we formed this company by default to freelance back to Channel Nine.”
Tribe Productions was born and it later sold a variety of shows – entertainment, children, science, the environment and extreme sport – to US and European broadcasters.
Now Adam’s Geelong company employs seven full-time staff and up to 25 at any given time.
The expanding news service on the internet is what Adam predicts will take Geelong households by storm in the next two years.
“That may sound strange to people who may have their PC sitting in a small room down the hallway that they collect a few emails from every week but it’s the future for TV,” he insists.
To see GOTV’s television programs including local news, visit www.gotv.net.au.