LONDON, 23 January 2001:

VIRTUE Broadcasting, Europe's leading Internet Broadcaster and Victoria Real, the new media company behind Big Brother, have formed a partnership to bring new Scottish Parliament online.

The two companies will work together to develop and host a range of online services including the Scottish Parliament web site (scottishparliamentlive.com) and live daily video coverage that will provide the Scottish Executive with the most advanced online experience available.

The site will feature 3 live bandwidth adaptive broadband video streams and 3 live audio streams to cover all proceedings in Edinburgh. Victoria Real has also used it's Big Brother experience to develop a bespoke content management solution to allow the Scottish parliament to publish both agendas and archived video which is captured live using specialised equipment installed in Edinburgh as part of the webcasting / 'on-the-fly' archiving solution. The site went live on 7:1:2002.

The right Honourable Sir David Steel, Presiding Officer of the Scottish Parliament said: "The Scottish Parliament was founded on the principles openness, accessibility and accountability. And by extending our use of the Internet to bring full, live, broadcast coverage of all parliamentary proceedings we take fulfillment of those founding principles to new levels.

"Not only is webcasting one of the most cost effective ways of delivering parliament to the people of Scotland, but our citizens no longer have to rely upon verbatim transcripts of proceedings or even attend debates in person. Instead they can engage with the democratic process from their desktop."

VIRTUE Broadcasting have a considerable track record for delivering high profile video content for record giants EMI and Sony as well as providing a diverse array of video and audio facilities for corporates such as BAT, Morse, Siebel and United Utilities. Victoria Real, who will be implementing a comprehensive and state-of-the-art technical infrastructure which is necessary for both broadcast and many other web solutions.

"VIRTUE Broadcasting provides us with a level of experience, expertise and reliability in internet broadcast delivery which is essential to the success of a project of this magnitude." Said Mike Worley, Technical Consultant, Victoria Real.

"This partnership marks a very exciting period in Virtue Broadcasting's history. By joining forces with Victoria Real we are able to provide an even more powerful proposition to clients such as the Scottish executive. We see this project as the beginning of a long term relationship." Said Giles English, Director, VIRTUE Broadcasting.