Current TV: A future for television?

Current.tv is a model for the future of television. 30% of the content on this cable and satellite channel comes from videos submitted via users online. The division between the Internet and other media is changing. The definition of the Internet is changing.

This model is sophisticated. User make programmes and get paid to make them (if they are aired) and viewers vote for the programmes that they wish to be aired (sort of like moveon.org).

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3 responses to “Current TV: A future for television?”

  1. cbellamy Avatar

    (sent via email from SAM…sam at media dot com dot au)

    i think craig has been asleep.

    current-tv has been around now for awhile now. what is interesting is
    comparing current, with what aljazeera international is trying to do,
    and also with what the canadian-based http://www.therealnews.com is trying to
    do… therealnews is old guard – 3cr discovered the net, kind of…
    but i’d be interested to have a decent analysis of all three.

    for me, the main downside to current (and definitely to therealnews
    when/if it gets going) – according to your previous emails – is quality.
    sure, it’s ‘citizen voice’ – but the quality can be problematic. you
    obviously haven’t watched a lot of it.

    current tv does not necessary push skills in story telling, etc… they
    are about content that appeals to young people – a spinach7 on tv – but
    a little less ernest, a little more kewler. spinach7 spent too much time
    focusing on quality control – in terms of language and design. current
    allows more flexibility in format. they want the kids to dance and
    think. spinach7 wanted the kids to think and think and then if there was
    time at the end of the week, do a bit of dancing. different models –
    different directions …

    the satellite channel i am starting up has nothing to do with what you
    think it does. it’s about distributing sri lankan cooking show to the
    diaspora. food is way more radical than anything else out there! that
    old cliche is exists for a reaso

  2. cbellamy Avatar

    sam, I have looked at both the current and the itw (therealnews) model and current is a much more sophisticated process, but I’m a little worried about therealnews content.

    once someone says something ‘secret’ or ‘real’ then they have lost me (this is too patronising for me).

    and there is already too much information and many media activist groups haven’t figured out that the restrictions of the cold war are over. it is now about information abundance and ‘media activism’ must now compete in a world littered with all sorts of media. quality is the way forward. shoot for the top 10% and give the rest something to strive for and make sure that the people who are striving know how quality is constructed and how to get there. create a pathway for quality information; make the audience work as hard as the producer did.

    societies are complex and you must reward people for looking beyond their everyday and beyond their own cultural relativism. there is more than one conversation.

    we need solutions, not just more flat journalism and art-less books written by journalists. the solution is less journalists and more humanities education. journalism is just a profession trying to justify its existence like all the rest of them. journalism is just a process. it’s one of many meta structures on the national and world stage; but some can only see one it seems.

    i think that it would be better for therealnews to educate people about media, rather than use the same old tactics of the people they claim to be different to. lead by example. we don’t need any more alternative news; we need strongly argued solutions and less one trick ponies. Media isn’t everything.

    I dare you to imagine a world without media.

    and i’m not sure is ‘voting’ on Current is a good idea. but it isn’t really voting; its just clicking on something. voting is something else

  3. cbellamy Avatar

    (a rough translation of the above comment)

    This he is one of the projects (reality, rather) that we more like to comment. Instead of defending the own thing and attacking the other people’s thing, or to vindicate a technology another one as opposed to, we like to emphasize formulations that tend to favor the portability, the convergence or the compatibility. We go, this in topic: to add, instead of reducing.
    Current is a televising chain original good: a 30% of their programming are videos of users. The idea by all means is not new: who has not seen these homemade recordings that they competed to a millionaire prize? But one was a dyed isolated program and in addition to amarillismo: all we assumed that a laborious material was used although amused stops according to whom.
    Now no; the social video that has exploded in Internet is dealt by the television with he himself rank. An option that typically approaches two means remote but condemned to become rich.
    From a strictly commercial point of view, it seems to me one ( the only one) strategy to recover the adolescent segment, in retired clearly of tele to migrate to the computer and the moving body.
    By the way: spectacular the site of Current.tv, as much in design, as usabilidad and content, with previews of the videos.

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