[Sfbay-video] FW: Seattle Time review of Current.tv

[Crescent Diamond]

Martha Walner sent this with some comments about how Public Access has been
doing this "new" thing all along.

Crescent Diamond
Programming Coordinator
Berkeley Community Media
www.betv.org
(510) 848-2288 x.13
crescent at betv.org

To see the most updated schedule for BTV 28 click here: BTV28

To watch BTV 28 on the web click here: Web Stream

-----Original Message-----
From: Martha Wallner [mailto:marthaw at lmi.net]
Sent: Tuesday, August 09, 2005 8:41 AM
To: Activist
Subject: Seattle Time review of Current.tv


Monday, August 8, 2005 - Page updated at 12:55 PM



Kay McFadden

Gore's Current TV shoots for the hip

By Kay McFadden

Seattle Times TV critic



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Video killed the radio star. Al Gore apparently is trying to kill
television.

Once upon a time, MTV brought the short heartbeat of pop tunes to a visual
medium. It was a true format innovation, whose effects linger in everything
from 15-second commercials to "American Idol" to concerns about an
attention-impaired society.

Last Monday, Current TV hit the air, announcing itself in similar
groundbreaking terms. The former vice president's brainchild, it has been
relentlessly billed as "A new concept in television where viewers create the
TV content that they watch."

That "new concept" part would be news to the hundreds of public-access
channels across the country. But then, Current TV is what cable-access
television would be like with more money, a less adventurous spirit and a
fanatical focus on one niche audience.

The audience Current TV wants to reach is 18- to 34-year-olds. As we all
know, it's a demographic woefully underserved — by only Fox, The WB, UPN,
Comedy Central, VH-1 and, oh yes, MTV, not to mention the dozens of cable
slivers devoted to interests like computers, extreme sports, car-pimping and
indie films.

Where to find it


Current TV is available in the Puget Sound region on DirecTV and on Comcast
cable channel 125. Comcast customers must subscribe to the digital-extra
tier in order to access it. The Web site for the new network is
www.current.tv.

To reach these viewers, Current TV has come up with a structure that borrows
from the Internet. Instead of old-fashioned half-hour or hour-long shows, it
has so-called "pods" — stories and segments ranging from 15 seconds to five
minutes long.

Each pod is branded under the Current logo and then labeled by type of
programming. There's Current Information, Current Escape, Current News, etc.
These broad categories are then subdivided into specific topics, called
Current Parent, Current Flicks, Current Travel, Current Tech and so on. For
example, a piece under "Current Video" featured people who parachute off
bridges.

To quote from the 18-to-34 crowd, whatever. Slapping a label on every bit of
content — particularly content that changes every few seconds or minutes —
thwarts the free-flowing, let's-put-on-a-show experience allegedly at the
heart of Current TV. It ends up feeling even more packaged than a late-night
infomercial.

And that's too bad, because some of the content is interesting.

A short documentary called "Iran Underground" from New York filmmaker Yasmin
Vossoughian took us into the world of secret house parties in Iran, where
young adults actually drink, dance and take Ecstasy. Vossoughian got her
subjects to really open up, and it was one of the most intimate, personable
pieces I've seen on nonwar Middle-Eastern life.

It also wasn't long enough. Current TV's short-attention-span theater may
give it a surface Web cachet, but it underestimates viewers. Whatever the
restless, channel-surfing nature of Generation Y (and Z), they're fully
capable of sustaining interest in a well-done half-hour or hour as
demonstrated by "Laguna Beach," "The Surreal Life," "Gilmore Girls" and "The
Daily Show."

Then again, those constitute entertainment — and as Chairman Gore and
partner/CEO Joel Hyatt have made clear, Current TV isn't entertainment. It's
"nonfiction information."

I'm tempted at this point to posit a connection between Gore's political
persona and the soul of Current TV. The notion that substance and amusement
are mutually exclusive could only spring from the mind of a man who expected
to excite voters with the prospect of a dull, earnest period of fine-tuning
the national bureaucracy.

Yet spirit aside, Current TV so far is surprisingly free of politics.
Frankly, it could use a more radical injection of opinion — or maybe just a
dose of the gross-out shorts on IFC.

Instead, it resembles an incubator for a future list of Hollywood's top 100.
The segments are introduced by overly enthusiastic and carefully groomed
people who could pass for fledgling news anchors in another universe, minus
a tendency to say things like "That video was siiiiick!" after a piece
concludes. Oh, how hard Current TV tries.

If Current's creators got one thing right in targeting the 18-to-34 crowd,
it's the relentless "I-I-I" approach to reporting.

Like the Web log mania presently in vogue on the Internet, no story is
worthwhile unless it can be sifted through the presenter's personal history.
An hour of Current TV contains more talking-to-the-camera asides than an
entire night of Fox sitcoms.

The actual content is generated mostly by the San Francisco-based staff or
by established filmmakers. That's not how it was supposed to be; initially,
Current said it would hire 200 video journalists, give them low-cost
equipment and turn them loose.

This didn't work out, reportedly because Gore felt picking 200 people was
too elitist. Instead, the network now is soliciting work directly from
viewers and stipulating a three-month exclusivity agreement for their work.
Contributions even can be uploaded to the Web site at www.current.tv (yes,
it's so cool, it's in the dot-tv domain).

Curiously, however, you can't get Current TV's broadcast "pods"
simultaneously video-streamed on the Web site. For an endeavor hell-bent on
parading its meld of computers and television, this seems like an egregious
oversight. (You can watch selected videos.)

On the other hand, no one sits behind a desk as the Voice of Authority.
There's a remarkable consistency of tone, for a new network. And it's hard
not to resist the promise of grass-roots programming, even though somebody's
got to filter the contributors.

Current TV seems to have sold its message to advertisers. It's partnered
with Google for news content, and commercials last week included Sony,
Converse, Feria, the B.C. band Hot Hot Heat and that fixture of low-cost
spots, DeVry University Online.

But here's the deal: For all the veneer of hipness, Current TV just doesn't
bring anything new to the table. It's as if it were created in an imaginary
universe devoid of competition — say, government.

On a more personal level, the magpie in me enjoyed the constant shifting of
pods. But the "I" part just wanted to curl up with "The O.C."

Kay McFadden: kmcfadden at seattletimes.com.

Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company

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