Current TV Gives Young Adults A Proper Jolt
July 14, 2006
By Neal Justin, Star Tribune
A new cable channel available in the Twin Cities offers a thoughtful mix of "podcasts" and factoids, all on a shoestring budget.
I grew up in a middle-class home with three square meals a day, tennis lessons and my mother's used station wagon. Yet I felt seriously deprived.
I wanted my MTV.
My parents didn't subscribe to cable until the week after I moved out of the house, so I had to get news of Madonna's new outfits from my friends. Yes, it was all pretty silly, but back in the '80s we didn't have much else on our plates.
I was thinking about those pioneering cable days this week as I watched Current TV, a youth-oriented channel that has the potential to be this generation's answer to MTV. The basic premise: a 24-hour destination that shuffles a mix of three- to seven-minute "podcasts," 30 percent of which are contributed by viewers, interspersed with nuggets about what's hot on the Internet.
If you're envisioning a platform where young people just share the latest on fashion, music and smooching techniques, then you probably think your kids still give a whit about Britney Spears.
These are headier times; this is headier TV.
Over the course of a few days, I watched mini-documentaries about North Korean defectors, reggae dancers in Tokyo nightclubs and a 17-year-old who has two moms.
In addition, the channel churns out an endless supply of intriguing factoids, from North America's most dog-friendly city (Chicago) to the location of the world's greatest youth hostel (Lisbon).
One of the finest pieces I saw was "No Child Left Behind," a film contributed by Minneapolis' Gabriel Cheifetz, in which two local musicians, Chris (Shakademic) Johnson and Glenn Scott, explore the pluses and minuses of joining the Army after high school. In a stunt that a young Mike Wallace never would have dreamed of, Cheifetz uses hidden cameras to expose some half-truths from a bubbly recruiter.
Some might say the channel is pushing a liberal agenda. After all, Al Gore is the operation's chairman, and a cartoon currently in rotation features Ann Coulter in bed with Adolf Hitler, both of them making out over cocktails of rat blood and snake venom.
But I was surprised to discover a fair amount of balance.
After a piece on a teenage girl advocating for gay marriage, the channel turned over airtime to a 19-year-old conservative who presented a commentary on why same-sex weddings are wrong. A news segment providing details on a rally opposing abortion in Mississippi was followed by information on attending an event for the other side.
Current doesn't have the flash of early MTV. Producers are obviously working on shoestring budgets (if your piece is selected, you make only up to $1,000), which means there's a lot of content that's little more than talking heads and basic graphics. But that doesn't mean that it can't be as compelling as a Michael Jackson epic video.
One extremely simple segment profiled Benjamin Zander, conductor of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, talking from a big, comfy chair about the merits of making mistakes. By the end, I felt as if I had just had coffee with the campus' favorite professor.
Watching Current TV is like digging through the features section of a great newspaper. It's entertaining, diverse and challenging -- and even has a comics section.
And if it sounds a lot different from the days in which we'd spend hours waiting for the next Duran Duran video, that's because it is.
Source: Star Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/1706/story/551026.html