Current in The Nation posted by Ben

The Nation has a reputation for knocking down statues with clay feet across the political spectrum. Therefore, it was with great interest that I read their recent commentary on Current, Al Gore's new television cable network.

Surprisingly, for an article that calls "Campaign Ad" "a satire of political campaign ads that came across as an amateurish stab at The Daily Show With Jon Stewart," I found myself agreeing with most of what they wrote. (They're right about "Campaign Ad," by the way. It's somewhat funny, but it lacks depth or relevance. Why that is, however, is a story for another day.)

However, I am also in a position to write about the new network from a bit more of a behind-the-scenes perspective.

The Nation writes:

Current has always been a work in progress, and perhaps never more so than today, only a few months before its launch. One thing is certain, however. Whatever Gore and Hyatt create won't be part of a broader progressive movement reclaiming American media. The more Gore says Current won't be political, the more likely he is to turn off the grassroots activists (and political players) who may have supported him. "They missed an opportunity to trade on that hunger for meaningful participation," Rushkoff says. "They underestimated how far they could've gotten."

Maybe, in this age of corporate consolidation, launching a viable, independent media company is itself an act of political resistance. Yet one can't help getting the sense that Gore and Hyatt, by buying a network, lining up bigwig investors, hiring industry professionals and courting advertisers and cable operators, ended up doing new media in a decidedly old-fashioned way. Instead of transforming the media, the media business may have transformed them.

This is completely accurate. The ideal spot on Current is under five minutes. The focus will be (must be) on pieces that will help expand the network's audience. Without a strong guiding force to encourage pieces of relevance and depth, rather than inanities about what Paris Hilton thinks about global warming, Current stands poised not to revolutionize media access, but to distill today's trends in vapid television production into smaller, more directed sound bites.

Am I being unfair to a network with an admittedly brilliant idea, to bring (well-produced?) public access television to an entire nation?

The problem is twofold. First, Current is not encouraging a format that is likely to add substantial value to the television experience. Five minute clips are good for a distraction, not a couple hours of viewing. Second, Current is attempting to be hip. They are hiring young producers, young talent, and encouraging young people to submit. Sure, that's fantastic and they have some amazing people on their staff, but the infrastructure backing those young people up is too polished to be hip. Polish and MTV-style zing create an appearance of exciting new material, but one viewed through a mainstream lens. Knowing what the week's top searches are on Google is not hip. Those searches are playing directly to the cultural mainstream while avoiding the experience of reality. Wasn't the point of Current to show what isn't on TV right now, rather than holding its finger on the pulse to mainstream-media-generated fads? Paris Hilton is a media creation. When Current's content creation model allows her to appear as an exciting part of one of their spots, it only shows that the fledgling network has already been seduced by the echo box, an empty chamber full of empty sound.

Once again, I don't intend at all to demean the work of the many friendly and talented people who are employed at Current. But I do have serious reservations about a supposedly revolutionary new channel that is too beholden to television's false reality to go all the way and really revolutionize television, a medium that is increasingly irrelevant to the people in this country who still enjoy thinking for themselves.