SPI's TV Station Coming to the Island

9/5/2020

Douglas Best, founder of the Partnership Institute and Iron Knee Video Entertainment, has made his way back to the Valley to develop family entertainment for the tourism industry of South Padre Island, Port Isabel, Laguna Vista, and Cameron County.

His specialty is in video production, multimedia, video on demand, and web-based solutions. Through the Partnership Institute, Best has overseen projects from not only in the U.S. but Mexico and Sri Lanka, as well.

Known as a former Director of Medical Continuing Education at UTB, Best has had a passion for producing educational videos to teach and entertain a broad audience. He came back to the Valley on a mission. "We wanted to develop family entertainment, so we started Ghost and History Tours in Port Isabel. What made it different is that we took characters from history and brought them to life."

A lot of work goes into productions. "We have had trouble getting people that will do this full-time. I used voice-over artists from all over the world to get the right accent. For example, Al Capone originally has a Brooklyn accent, so I used voice-over artists from Brooklyn."

Best has a goal to communicate what happens locally through a community channel named Iron Streams using ROKU. "When things get put on Facebook, that's nice, but it gets buried under an avalanche of other stuff within 30 minutes. There's no way to communicate what happens locally." The Iron Streams application will include several channels, including SPIPI TV (South Padre Island and Port Isabel TV.)

"It's going to take time," says Best. "The vision is that at some point, we can create a tourism industry that stretches from here to Brownsville, leaning on history that complements our ecotourism industry. We have different shows that we want to do. We take things that happened and run with it." This could help South Padre Island attract more tourists by taking advantage of the rich culture and history of our area, in addition to our natural environment.

Though the tedious process has not been easy, much of it has stopped due to COVID-19. Best is planning on laying down this family entertainment foundation soon. He has currently been working on educational animations and converting publisher's content to online video, to bring a TV channel that advertises things to do, places to shop, sporting events, and places to eat.

Along with current production, Iron Streams also produces theater commercials and cable commercials. Best added, "For those businesses that run a Spectrum cable commercial through us, there will be no additional cost for the commercial to be placed in the SPIPI TV system. The structure for the system is built and all we need to do is start loading content. Limited content will also be accessible through http://SPIPI.TV."

Please do not forget to fill out your census (if you have not already), Cameron County is counting on you (literally)!