A US TV channel aims to give American youth a voice with Internet-style interactivity.
Former U.S Vice President Al Gore has gone back to his journalistic roots and is launching an interactive TV channel aimed at actively involving eighteen to thirty-five year old Americans. Current TV, will air a combination of short segments on news, entertainment and culture, produced both by professionals and by the Channel’s audience. It will also be available in the UK through Sky and Virgin Media.
Gore’s initiative aims to create a space which empowers American youth by giving them a voice and an opportunity to have their opinions and perspectives heard in mass media. Audience members will be encouraged to shoot and edit their own videos and upload them to Current TV’s web site. Both the Channel’s producers and the web audience at large will have a say in choosing which segments get to air on TV. With Current TV’s original format, television and the web will be very closely linked, as the channel will broadcast a segment every half an hour about the latest most popular search term on Google.
Some of the programming planned includes segments such as Current Playlist (music), Current Parent (parenting), Current Gig (careers) and Current Soul (spirituality). Current TV’s team of professional producers, all aged under forty are preparing reports on everything from Japanese Internet suicide pacts to US drug culture. The features contributed by viewers may include everything from parachuting to Iranian youth culture, to relationship stories. Contributors are encouraged to express themselves freely, exposing their personal biases and opinions. Gore hopes this format will promote dialogue and interactivity between producers and viewers and a new kind of Internet-influenced television where programming remains dynamic, and constantly adjusting to viewer feedback about what they want and don’t want to hear about.
Gore, who is a member Apple Computer’s board and a consultant to senior executives of Google, is promoting the channel as a means of empowerment and forum for participatory democracy. The channel is however completely funded by advertising. It remains to be seen how freely industry allows young America to express itself.
This article was published Thursday, March 15, 2007.
