People at Current TV

[UPDATED BELOW and the body has been edited for more clarity]

"Well, as you know, viewer-contributed content is essential to our mission, which is about democratizing television. We're about telling stories that aren't being told right now. We're about giving the audience a complete voice and a complete role in what we're doing. Our mission statement begins with working with the audience, to create a new category of content.

So I don't think you're ever going to see us increasing the amount of professionally produced content we offer. But I think what you are going to see is that the quality level of viewer contributions is going to get better and better."


-David Neuman, President of programming, Current TV

As some of you may know all of us here at Media Crashers are citizen video producers who have been past supporters and contributors to Current TV , Al Gore's cable network. Over the past few months, many of us have been very troubled by the changes at Current which seem to be taking away the essential genius that the network represented: putting citizens in control of what they see on TV.

Originally, members of the Current website had two options: those who had production skills could submit "citizen journalism" videos for consideration as TV content and those who didn't could still participate, in a very real way, by becoming "citizen programmers." Any member could contribute their vote to "greenlight" submissions and this would push the videos they liked up the ranks. The heart of this voting system was was called "the leaderboard" which was like a top 1000 list of the videos as ranked by the voters. There was a unique, dramatic, thrill to watching your video, or a video you voted for enter at about 200 or 300 and slowly rise and fall through the ranks, depending on how well it did. To win the number one spot was the ultimate rush and the greatest validation a producer could receive. The process was also very open. Just like a democracy where citizens can watch the votes being counted, the web interface displayed the greenlight voters, the scores, and the value of each person's vote so that it was possible to go back and do the math if someone wanted to.

Unfortunately, this whole system of bringing the people directly into the programming choices was done away with as the final stage of what appears like a slow takeover by the Current staff. Ironically, this was right about the time Al Gore won an emmy for "interactive television"

The "redesigned" website has no leaderboard and it looks more like a social networking meets DIGG/Delicious page where staff and members blog their thoughts. People can still upload videos but they are all buried in the mechanics of things like collecting each other's profiles, sharing links with each other, answering staff questions with webcam videos, following staff "assignment desk" projects rather than making up their own, and collecting links to viral videos they like. These things in themselves are not necessarily bad additions to the website. The problem is that all of this stuff goes into a giant blob of "content" which also includes in house staff videos mixed in, with no separation or distinction. The "leaders" in the community seem to me much more staff centered than member centered. As a citizen producer, you can't even find a list of your own videos in your profile.

So how has this all worked out?

Someone just sent me some interesting research they did about Current TV.

Here is a screenshot they took of the "People" page at Current.com. It is the front page of this section where the most popular and most active people can be found.

Here it is:

Click on it for a larger image:


This next picture shows the exact same screen shot but the researcher went through the profiles of each person and anyone who is on the Current Staff has been marked:


Click for Larger Image:




I'll let the images speak for themselves.

UPDATE:

Apparently some in the comments believe that it is the ability to pitch stuff to Current that makes it democratic. I would submit that every network in the world accepts pitches from people, even ordinary people which is what all feelance TV producers start out as. Listening to anybody who wants to talk is not what makes something democratic. It is the process people can use to put their voices forward that defines "democratizing the media." I don't believe that a cable network staff is an underrepresented minority when it comes to deciding TV content. I also don't believe an "assignment desk" where staff tell the people what kinds of productions they want submitted is a brave new approach to making television. Democritizing the media means that people can start the conversation, submit their ideas and then look at everyone's ideas and vote, in an open and verifiable way, for the ones that should go on TV. The Current staff have always made their own content along side and they have also made their own choices from the submissions. I don't have a problem with that. The difference today is that the audience is no longer bypassing staff and choosing content independently as a way of balancing out staff picks (or vise versa). That is the heart of the problem for me. The voting today has no transparency and it is a "recommendation" not a final decision.


UPDATE II:

I my recent contacts with Current I have been informed that they understand the problems with their website and have changes coming including a "bigger and better" leaderboard. I'm not sure what this means. It was the "improvements" they made to the old leaderboard that led to it's dysfunction and eventual termination in the first place. Despite my lack of confidence, I will remain hopeful. The community that they inspired is still there trying to make a difference.

24 hours on the new Current.com site

Current TV is the brainchild of former vice-president Al Gore and Joel Hyatt to "democratize the media". If they only knew what it's become...

So who am I?

I'm a veteran of the original website, a former community moderator, I've gotten 3 pieces picked for airplay and one actually made it on TV - the other 2 died in the approval process (pods on the film Jesus Camp and Death of A President never made it to airplay because of their legal dept. and various other reasons). My story wasn't unique, dozens if not more of the pods picked for TV by the Current.TV community never made it to airplay.

But let's start from the beginning.

Current.TV started out as a noble experiment to empower everyday people, from video producers to webcammers to produce stories called "pods" which would make up 30% of the content of Current TV, a station formerly known as NewsWorld International (NWI) owned by Vivendi. Al Gore was looking to form a station that was based on grassroots organizing, a savvy army of footsoldiers with camcorders -- and would, in time, take back the airwaves from a glut of corporate media. Gore was looking for something that would make up for the failures of conventional media, and give young people a voice.

"You must become the change you wish to see in the world," was the mantra for Current TV's army of independent producers, armed with the knowledge that their stories would be published online at Current.TV. The online community at Current's website would serve as citizen programmers for the channel, and through a "Greenlighting" process would vote for a winning piece of video week, and have it put on the air. This would be their model for media democracy. Citizen producers and citizen programming, it was a fantastic concept.

A pay scale was established for every story you got on television, $500 for the first 2 stories, then $750, then $1000 for every story from there on in. It was a dream - you could conceivably make a living producing a few pods per month for the network, and we were all excited at this prospect and mobilized everyone we knew to tune in to Current TV to see this revolution in media take place.

"The problem with online democracies is people", you can quote me on that. At least this is what Current's staff was learning. Issues constantly arose in their online community, much of it about their programming, or lack of it, by the community.

Some of the many issues raised by Current's online community:

1. Pods were getting voted on the air by the community and not ever showing up on TV.

2. Video pods that were showing up on TV were hand picked by the staff over other pods, seemingly based on superficial criteria or topics. (eg. fashion/style over news/journalism)

3. The staff picked plenty of stories per week from the producer pool, but the ones voted for by the community, which equaled 52 stories per year (eventually we fought for 2 per week, or 104 per year), were often heavily scrutinized and sometimes rejected for on air play.

And so it went on and on.

Then people noticed a pattern where stories picked for and commissioned by the network began to show up on TV with an eerie similarity to regular old media: fashion over politics, hot cars over community activism, beautiful models (current hottie) over feminist issues, Paris Hilton's cellphone hacking vs. well... anything else. Current seemed to be programming a channel that was contradictory to their mission. A channel that was supposed to free the airwaves up for 18-34 year olds was rapidly becoming a vapid channel of pretty people selling clothes, music, celebrity gossip, and hot trends.

All of this was a glaring inconsistency with Current TV's original mission of democratizing the media, and their community spoke out time and time again in their message boards about the superficiality of everything; from the stories picked for TV each week, the refusal to air community picks, down to the fact that every on-air host was a walking advertisement for everything wrong with TV with a touch of ageism and anorexia thrown in for good measure (even MTV had Kurt Loder). Current was so obsessed with their image they were missing the point of the channel's creation: to democratize TV. In the process they became part of the problem they were supposed to be solving.

There were a lot of problems, but the online community was vibrant, many spoke out about these issues in the forums, and at the very least, we felt the feedback we provided would be heard and acted upon. If we only knew what was in store.

About a year ago, without any input the community of users I was familiar with, the new Current.com (formerly current.tv) was launched, and the veterans of the website kind of looked at it and said "what the f**k is this?" Many of us said it looked like their former Youtube model was abandoned in favor of a new website that was Facebook meets a Digg/Delicious link-sharing model with a touch of Stickam thrown in for good measure. Neither concept was original, nor were their merging compelling enough to be truly innovative.

The new emphasis of the redesigned website would utilize in-house staff to provide daily content as links, and encourage the community to do the same. The previous model where users produced and submitted video pods & had them voted upon by the users was now given a back seat, in both prominence and attention.

The existing community was stunned as we watched the leaderboard, the long standing method of community participation to get a video on TV abruptly removed.

The contentious message boards where frustrated producers argued with staffers that they were ruining the network and the website, was deleted.

And in the process of all of this happening, many of us felt that the noble experiment where we would democratize the media - abruptly ended.

Yes, Virginia, Current TV still takes user contributed videos, but it seems to almost be an after thought. The pay scale was thrown out. Current claimed removing the payscale would allow them to pay their community contributers more money for their videos, but the opposite is what actually happened. Producers were consistently now offered less than the $1000 per story they were previously getting - given a 'take it or leave it' attitude. And those stories that were getting on air were heavily edited, re-edited, and in some cases had the context they were originally shot in removed.

_________________

The site's relaunch, which removed much of the emphasis from their original battle cry of "democratizing the media" and attracting people to create Current TV's content showed me one thing, there's no one steering the ship anymore at Current TV - it's a adrift in a sea of media look-a-likes, pretty much what many feared was going to happen. Gore and Hyatt turned a promising idea of a real revolution in television over to the same media insiders that have dominated the industry for years, and much to the channel's detriment.

Stage 1 of the website, which is over, netted Current TV a large list of hungry media producers that can make them cheap content -- just as long as they're "on the same page as them". 30% of their content would come from their viewers, even if those viewers were a list of producers that would create content the programming department required and the stories they assigned or commissioned now.

More than a few producers have left the current community on their own out of disgust (plisko), some producers went back into the commercial field (yours truly), and others have flocked back to YouTube (markdaycomedy) and other video sites where they can try to make a living. Many more simply just never came back a month or two after the new site launched.

Stage 2 of the Current TV website appears to have minimized the focus on building a unique community of video producers and citizen programmers who want to change the way TV is made and shifted to a more inclusive model where people talk about TV and submit their ideas as links.

Many of us flocked to Current TV at the start because we were from the old media model, we hated that model and we wanted to see fundamental change in the industry. Current seemed to be the answer to what we were looking for, but it left many of us wishing for more.

___________________

A few parting thoughts, for those who think I'm only concentrating on the negative. I think the Current Journalism dept. at the channel is actually one of the better things to come from their efforts, they've produced some fine pieces and worked with many producers, including myself, to help get some timely ENG/News style stories on the air. My main gripes are with some of their webdev and on-air programming decisions, and the disconnect with their online community and TV audience.

As of 1/29/08 many new changes to the video section and front page rolled out, and some issues raised by myself and other users at the website were addressed. The leaderboard seems to remain a holdout. It's months later and no progress has been seen towards returning to some type of a transparent voting model for citizen programmers - if it returns it will be a good day for Current's VC2 community of producers who felt left out of the new website. But frankly, I doubt message boards will ever return. That being said. I think this company has made some pretty bad decisions, and I'm fairly certain nothing is going to change in the short term, at least not without public criticism of what they're doing. Criticism seems to be the one thing that moves them from their slumber -- loud public criticism.

These words are written in the hopes that Current sees the error of their ways and becomes a legitimate force for change in media, instead of emulating all the problems and things that are wrong with it now. If it can't change, show the people running the place the door and bring in people who will make it work the way it was supposed to.

We seem to have come a long way since this was said in 2005:

"Well, as you know, viewer-contributed content is essential to our mission, which is about democratizing television. We're about telling stories that aren't being told right now. We're about giving the audience a complete voice and a complete role in what we're doing. Our mission statement begins with working with the audience, to create a new category of content.

So I don't think you're ever going to see us increasing the amount of professionally produced content we offer. But I think what you are going to see is that the quality level of viewer contributions is going to get better and better."

-David Neuman, President of programming, Current TV

Someone recently asked me if I'd ever produce a pod or story for Current.TV again. That's a question I'm not sure how I'd answer. Current managed to get me, a born cynic, excited about their channel at first, which led to me jumping in and for 2 years donating hundreds of hours of my time there. But, and there's a BIG but, let me just say when participating in the experience of democratizing the media and seeing it become reduced to a trite marketing phrase, it leaves a taste in your mouth that is hard to wash away.

-zen
former VC^2 producer, Current.tv

This article is in it's 4th revision.)

Politics: NetCenter08 - GOP YouTube Debate

I have been very caught up in things lately so I apologize for the lapse in posting.

I think this video is an excellent representation of the possible future of media. Dubbed "NetCenter08," It is 2 new media personalities: Dan Manatt from Politics TV.com, and David All from TechRepublican.com to discuss the latest CNN Republican Presidential debate which used YouTube questions.

It looks to me like they are talking on webcams much like the old media talks through satellite links. These two webcam videos are then composited together with some graphics and footage from the debates. It is a really good use of widely available, relatively low cost, technology to create the look and feel of your typical news debate. Because it is coming from the netroots rather than TV producers, this conversation feels more authentic to me. I hope we see more of this format. Todays TV media feels more like a pro wrestling circus among elite media pundits and hosts. That is what the old media thinks is good television but it has been done to death. This new media technology can bring more diversity to the national conversation. That is what this site is created to celebrate.

As for this CNN YouTube Debate, I like the national town hall format that it represents. The problem for me is in the details, however. Stalin once said that it's not who votes, it's who counts the votes. In this case it's not who asks the questions, it's who chooses the questions that make it in. There were 5000 submissions for this debate. CNN chose somewhere around 34 questions without any input from anyone but CNN. Now, do you think if CNN had a list of questions they wanted to ask ahead of time that they couldn't find one of the 5000 that asked it for them? What's to stop them? In that sense this whole thing feels more like an exploitation of the new media as a pool for low cost content ideas and as a marketing gimmick rather than an authentic tool of democracy. In that measure, it troubles me.

I have the same issue with Current TV. They talk about democratizing the media by letting anyone submit things but that is useless if some group of staff TV producers then gets to choose from those submissions and sit down with editors and change the perspective, or cut stuff out and put on their own graphics to "punch it up". How is this any different from approaching any producer anywhere to pitch our work? The democracy is in letting the people decide what goes on the air and putting it on as chosen. It is not bestowing people with the privilege of pitching your video to a media person. In this area both CNN and Current TV are failing the democratic potential of the web media. When these old media and new media representatives decide they will have the guts to put real democracy into the process, then they can talk about how great and innovative their ideas are. Until then they are just selling used cars with a new paint job.

If you want to see real political democracy in action go to 10questions.com THAT is a YouTube town hall forum worth praising. Both PoliticsTV and TechRepublican and tons of other netroots organizations are sponsors. On that site you submit YouTube videos and then vote for the ones you want and the top 10 are presented to the candidates to make their own response videos. The submission and voting phase is over but the questions chosen are all good and it will be nice to hear some answers. You also get to vote on how well each candidate's answers to the questions are. So far Mike Huckabee, Rona Paul and John Edwards have agreed to participate. Barack Obama also answered 1 question by putting in a clip from one of his speeches as an answer. You can send a mass email to every candidate from their website. Please do so if you want to support real democracy in the new media.

Sunday Inspiration: Nigel Ryan - My Prayer

Nigel Ryan Is a video producer in Brooklyn who has recently had his work picked for broadcast on Current TV. This project is the only one he has uploaded at Current so far and it is a very touching emotional piece about a parents wishes for a new child.

Documentary: Mr. New York - De La Vega, NY Artist

The combined talents of Keith Winsted as producer and host, John Roegner as Director of Photography and Laura Bermudez as editor make up the web production team known as Mr. New York.

This is a profile that they did of a very well known artist in the NYC neighborhood known as Spanish Harlem. They have a Current TV account and they have submitted a couple of their videos, including this one, for TV. It looks like it might make it too because it is in the top 5 member picks as of this writing.

I'm also happy to see that Current finally cleaned up the mess that was their embeddable video look. All that clutter of buttons and logos before always bothered me.

Agriculture: Emile Vig - The Future Farm

This is a second contribution by producer Emile Vig to Current TV. His first, A Midwest Oasis, was a study of the Milwaukee art musiem. It was chosen by the web community for TV back in April. This latest upload of his looks like it will be taking the same route as it is presently number one in the community picks. This one tells the story of a progressive farm in NY that is trying to be a model for local, sustainable, agriculture.

Video Activism: The Battle for America

Directed by Alrick Brown and written by Max Skolnik, The Battle for America, came to life shortly after the 2004 elections. The piece was one of the most popular videos that ever landed on current.tv. It was also one of the first videos that I saw on the website and it really made me understand the impact one video could have. It also helped me to understand that current.tv was not just another lame video site featuring crazy stunts, but an actual outlet for creative minds wishing to make a real impact on society today. This video is a great example of fusing poetry, film, and politics to inspire. For more information on this video and the story behind it visit director Alrick Brown's website

Comedy: Current TV - Super News - Gates Vs. Jobs

Current TV is a national cable TV network that was founded by Al Gore. It is targeting the intelligent wing of the MTV base and it is the strongest advocate I have seen yet for the new media generation. One of the primary features of Current is that about 1/3 of it's content is created by independent producers who upload their work to the website. The website has an interface similar to YouTube in some ways but with specific requirements for the kinds of content they will accept.

They want ordinary people to create short 2-8 minute documentaries or satirical shorts, which they call "Pods" and post them on the website. There, both the web community and the Current programming staff review the submissions. If the programming staff like something, they will pay the producers to broadcast it. If the staff don't choose your work, there is still a chance for it because everyone who is a member of the website can cast a vote for any Pod they think should be on TV.

There is a ranking list that puts the pods in the order of their popularity and the number one choices are automatically picked for broadcast twice a week. Along with pods, Current also offers opportunities for people to submit raw footage, homemade commercials for their sponsors and promo spots for the cable network. The upside of all this is that it is a great place for talented people to get their work in front of a national cable TV audience. The down side is that once you are paid for your work, Current has the exclusive right to that particular version of it forever.

I and my fellow contributors have all been very prolific on Current TV and we have each been through this selection process several times now both by the community and by the staff. I must admit that I have had strong disagreements with Current on some of the new directions they have taken since they began. However, I still think Current is the best idea that has come around in the media for a while. It is very fertile ground for grass roots producers and amateurs who want to showcase their work, give and get constructive criticism and share stories and ideas that aren't being found on TV.

Current is also a great place for people who want to find web videos that are trying to be productive rather than just getting attention. We will be sharing many of them here in the future. This time, though, I thought it would be fun to share a funny spot that was done as one of their in house productions: Super News