Roots Television

A special genealogical program, which is privately owned, called Roots Television began in late 2006 with the slogan ‘Where History Meets Heritage.’

With genealogy as the second most popular hobby, there was a need for a special channel geared for those interested in family history. It was developed and run today by avid genealogists and family history lovers of all types. It provides information not only for the person looking for a long last relative, but also the seeker of historical artifacts, rural country traditions, scrap bookers, those interested in nostalgia and people documenting their family heritage.

There are thousands of genealogical related videos, including interviews, how-to, DNA stories, new genealogy techniques, explanation of software programs, documentaries and even segments from the PBS Ancestors series. All the programs are broken down into categories such as British Family History, Hispanic Genealogy, Kids and Genealogy, Genealogical Societies, Immigration Research and many others.

An easy search box is available for finding by title or content the special topics the viewer wants to examine. The various program titles include: “Climbing Family Trees - Preserving Pictures,” “Flatbed Scanning,” “African-American Research,” “Gathering Family History Information,” Australian Immigrants,” “Cemetery Records,” “Genealogy in Hawaii,” “Irish Family Name Spellings & Genealogy,” “Read and Copy - Headstones, Certificates” and “A Better Way to Cite Online Sources.”

Some of the videos were prepared by Roots Television, but many of the shows come from regular television programs. What has been done to this branch of Internet-based television is to make them more user-friendly. What might have been an hour show on regular television is broken into appropriate segments or topics. Each segment is from 3 to 8 minutes in length. This way a viewer picks the one segment they are interested in seeing and watches just that part as many times as they desire. If the viewer wants to see the entire program, they watch all the segments for the program, each part marked so the audience knows they have seen all sections. It gives the genealogist the opportunity to watch and study what they want when they want to see it and as many times as they desire.

The Roots Television segments can be viewed on a computer at full screen ability right from their web site or the download shows can be watched on home-networked TV sets and other devices.

They also accept user-submitted content on their brand new Roots Tube Channel. Here, can be submitted family reunions, the taped interview of a great grandmother, or a researcher’s journey through a cemetery. Roots Television puts out a Roots TV Newsletter which arrives at a subscriber’s email box free of charge.

Roots Television continues to offer as much free genealogy and family history videos as possible. The majority of all the programs are free to everyone. Occasionally there is special programming through a pay-per-view or with a download-to-own option.