Antennas Direct Ambassador

Mar 27, 2015- Permalink

Ian Evans: writer, photographer, pundit, host, over-the-air (OTA) TV enthusiast, and ambassador.

Ambassador?

Let me explain. I’m writing this as full disclosure that I’ve agreed to join the Antennas Direct Ambassador program starting this month. Besides my regular Twitter media account (@digitalhit), I also have a personal account I use as a cord-cutting over-the-air (OTA) TV enthusiast: @TorontoOTA

My first antenna was a small Terk and it served me well until the fall of 2014, when I was able to get my hands on an Antennas Direct Clearstream 2V antenna. I loved it. It fixed many of the issues I was having. In my @TorontoOTA Twitter timeline, I often found myself boosting the products and advice offered by Antennas Direct or retweeting interesting OTA links they had found. I did this freely because I truly liked their product.

OTA isn’t just they way that I get TV, it’s a bit of a hobby too. Enthusiastic OTAers are quite often tweaking their set-ups or seeing what distant signals they can get during special weather events. So it’s a hobby – some might call it an obsession – but it keeps me off the streets.

So when I write about OTA TV, it’s personal. It’s not part of my journalistic beat. I cover movies, TV shows, film festivals and celebrity news minus the gossip. It would be wrong of me to become a brand ambassador for a film studio. Since I do not cover cord-cutting professionally, I do not see any conflict touting a company — Antennas Direct — whose products I believe in. As an “ambassador”, I’ll get a chance to try out some of their products before the public. I’ll tweet about events they’ll be holding. I’ll offer…and they’ve asked for…constructive criticism. If I talk about their products on this site, it will be in my column, Evans Above, and I will link to this disclosure post each time that I do.

Thanks.