September 17, 2007
Current TV Wins Emmy For Some Reason
We watched the Emmy Awards last night (for what it's worth: yay, 30 Rock!), and the award shows fellating Al Gore continues, this time for Current TV, which won for Best Interactive Programming or Best iWorld Wide Web Doing God's Work or something inane like that.
Also: really? Why? Aside from having sweet Mission Bay offices -- with self-consciously placed arcade games in their front windows -- Current TV takes itself way too seriously to be important. They have a ton of information (it's nearly all user-generated), none of it interesting. Or at least, so overwhelmingly varied and uncategorized, it's impossible to match users to the content they want. And the homepage scares us.
Have any of you had success with Current TV as being either informative or pleasantly time-wasting? Because we haven't.
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you sure you're talking about the right building? There's no arcade games in any windows...
amusing perspective though, makes me wonder if you got rejected for something (job, submission, who knows) and are just grumpy.
not that i remember, guest. but what with the revolving positions i find on CL, i'd have plenty of opportunity for current tv rejection.
he's talking about being able to see right into their control center for the channel operations guys. kind of like a noc for technology companies. those weren't games they were playing. that was the status and feeds of everything being broadcast.
Yeah, content generated by users. It's like blogging on TV but more rubbish. The Youtubes is way more entertaining. In my mind it's filed in the same place as QUOKKA was back in the day. Yay! Live yacht racing and mountain climbing video on a dial up connection. Let's all talk about this until it gets really big.
i actually really like currenttv. it's all i watch besides vh1 soul
CurrentTV provides a good mix of education and funny stuff - mostly from a younger person's perspective. They put a camera in the hands of Iraqis to show us and to discuss their daily experience. Compared to Big Brother, Nancy Grace, Real World, the dippy blonde celebreality shows (the Simpson girls, Paris, whateva) ... CurrentTV is like The Economist ... not for everybody, but something for folks who cannot commit to PBS 12 hour miniseries yet want to learn something in the few minutes they may actually spend in front of a TV box. Me like.
Very global-centric, I might add .... they seem to purposely show international pods. I really liked one about the native Alaskans and the way they carry on with their traditions, yet how they're affected by global warming and so on. There's a lot of good stuff.... sure, there's a bunch of stuff that isn't interesting, but come back in 5 minutes for the next pod.
Current TV is crap.
It's college student news with a budget. At best.
Even worse, it bumped the world news channel off of cable.
So instead of being able to watch the BBC or Deautche Welle or NHK tell me what's going on in the world, I get too attractive "journalists" with names like Cloud and Nbinge'e and T-Jonnn telling me how cool it was to hang out in a totally carbon neutral yurt-based resort and discuss independent films.
Fuck Current TV.
I know it's not cool to say you actually like anything.. but you should give current a chance. Not every pod is a gem but there is enough good stuff to make the channel certainly worth watching. Compared to a lot of what passes as television these days, current is pretty refreshing.
I was a big fan of Current Tv when it first aired, but I haven't thought to turn it on for at least the past six months, maybe a year. It would be nice if their scheduling was more clear-cut, for sure. I'm guessing more people would give it a chance if they knew what they were tuning in for. Now that I have access to Direct tV 24/7, I just might turn it on again though.
I wish they would bring programming like '80s cult-classic, Night Flight back in some form. That shit was the bomb. Especially this Tom Waits profile. Current seems like a PC, corporate, watered-down version of Night Flight.
You mean AL GORE TV, That alone invalidates its importance
fizzandpop has nailed it.
Current has the same potential and the same problem as just stumbling blindly through the Internet or looking every day for insight from the person sitting next to you on Muni: There may be something interesting there somewhere, but the signal to noise ratio is so abysmal it's sometimes disheartening to even think about.
Wait, you know what would be really cool? Some kind of way to know what's important and what we can safely ignore. Some kind of, um ... door-tender or something. No, "gatekeeper" is better, or maybe "editor." Then instead of media just in one Current we could think of it as being media that are part of the "main stream." Didn't there used to be something like that?
What's the worst part about Current TV?
Let's just say I'd read their "agreements" thoroughly before turning over your footage to them. If I'm not mistaken, you not only grant them permission to do whatever they want with it, but you might actually be granting them an exclusive license for a period of time as well. So lame...
the best part about currenttv is that if something is not so great you don't have to wait long for something good to come on the tv.
all i know is... the guys on the network max and jason are freakin hot but on too sparingly. its true the schedule is a bit chaotic
What broadcast company doesn't claim exclusivity rights on incoming media? From a business stand-point it only makes sense, especially in the competitive market place. IFC does it, HBO does it, Showtime does it, CNN does it, Sundance Channel does it. I produced an indie film program for a non-profit PEG access in Southern Cal and ran in to this issue a lot where an indepedent filmmaker was unable to grant us permission to broadcast his/her film due to an exclusivity contract. As annoying as it may be it's just the nature of the beast.
And Brock, seriously, this comment, "not that i remember, guest. but what with the revolving positions i find on CL, i'd have plenty of opportunity for current tv rejection," is well, kind of lame. I have no idea what "CL" is, but I imagine you're referring to the job-line. Do the research and you may find that Current is the fastest growing cable network ever, meaning that's not turnover.
That's called growth.