.tv

.tv is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Tuvalu. The domain name is popular, and thus economically valuable, because TV also happens to be an abbreviation of the word television.

In 1998, the government of Tuvalu sought to capitalise on the .tv suffix, later signing with the International Telecommunication Union, Information.CA, Idealab, Verisign, and currently GoDaddy to expand the domain. with hundreds of thousands of websites registered under the domain. Google treats .tv as a generic top-level domain (gTLD) because "users and website owners frequently see [the domain] as being more generic than country targeted."

History

Background and creation

As a small island-nation, Tuvalu used to have a low yearly income, which would eventually change with the local government's creation of the .tv domain.

Marketing and use

thumb|Logo of the domain under Verisign

On 31 December 2001, the company was acquired by Verisign for $45 million, including $10 million for Tuvalu's $3 million stake in the company. Quarterly payments were renegotiated from $1 million to $550,000 and extended to last until 2011.

As Verisign opted not to renew its contract, on 14 December 2021, GoDaddy signed a contract with the government of Tuvalu to manage .tv registrations, increasing yearly payments to the government of Tuvalu to $10 million. In 2023, an agreement between the Government of Tuvalu and the GoDaddy Company outsourced the marketing, sales, promotion and branding of the .tv domain to the Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, which established a .tv Unit.

Content stations

Websites with the .tv domain often feature video content for specific brands or firms. The domain contains the sites of news services, including Fox News and MSNBC. It also includes streaming services such as Amazon Prime, Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, and Dropout. The domain also contains the website Twitch, and the Eurovision Song Contest. According to Lucian Constantin at Softpedia, "CO.TV is a free domain provider that is obviously being abused by the people behind this campaign. All of the rogue domains used are hosted on the same IP address."

Impact on Tuvalu's economy

In 2019, the island of Tuvalu gained an estimated $5.5 million from the domain, along with other business practices like fishing.

Future

Tuvalu's long-term habitability is threatened by climate change, with the island being barely above sea level. In response to the question of what would happen if a nation-state would cease to exist, the ICANN board stated: "If the code element is removed, the ccTLD would be eligible for retirement. Reason for removal is not of relevance." This means that the top-level domain would be dissolved if the country were to disappear, eventually needing to be recreated as a gTLD for television and video media (thus making its actual use official), maintained elsewhere—such as in the United States, like .com, .org, .net, and other generic-use domains.