The Al Gore-founded Current TV has been called many things since it first went to air on August 1, 2005—and even before that. When rumors surfaced that Gore had television ambitions, many thought he was looking to start a Fox News Channel for the left, a kind of televised Air America. Then, when Gore and co-founder Joel Hyatt confirmed that “Current TV” was happening and what it would be—a nonideological roster of short, youth-created YouTube-style mini-documentaries—it was called something else: a television revolution. It was also called a high-risk gamble, an ambitious leap ahead of the curve, and a foolhardy endeavor. Then, for a while, it wasn’t called much at all.
In the almost six years since Current TV launched to great fanfare and media buzz, it has generally defied expectations. Mostly it has done so by staying out of sight and out of mind. But even if you look closely, many predictions were well off the mark. Has it revolutionized television? With an average of 23,000 primetime viewers and just a trickle of incoming user-generated content, not exactly. What has it become then? Not much of anything, really, in terms of impact. The only time most Americans have thought of Current TV in the past five years was when two of its reporters, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were captured in March 2009 after walking across the shallow Tumen River from China to North Korea.
That was, of course, until yesterday.
The media surrounding Keith Olbermann’s announcement yesterday that he was joining the network recalled some of the media surrounding Current TV’s early days: optimistic sound bites from a jovial conference call in which @KeithOlbermann and Gore announced that the Countdown anchor would not only host a revved-up version of that MSNBC show, but he would be “chief news officer” of the network. “Nothing is more vital to a free America than a free media, and nothing is more vital to my concept of a free media than news produced independently of corporate interference,” Olbermann said, in what was no doubt a rejoinder to a certain interfering corporation he’s familiar with.
The analysis following the announcement was full of predictions and snap-judgments about winners and losers in the deal. But the non-event of Current TV since its launch should give us pause in rushing to define Olbermann’s impact on the network, or its impact on him. The original Current TV headlines—the advent of “Do-It-Yourself News,” “For Gore, a Reincarnation on the Other Side of the Camera,” “Al Gore’s TV Revolution”—and talk of great innovation never really bore out as grandiosely as they may have. Skeptical Newsweek reporter Brad Stone wrote a feature on Current before the network’s launch in 2005. Assessing Gore’s idea to launch of a network run on short-form topical but-not-news documentaries, Stone wrote, “The promise of that ambiguity is that Current TV may develop new ways of telling stories. The danger is that it will end up not really being anything.” And in a sense that is how the network defied expectations, by never really becoming anything.
That’s not to say that Current TV hasn’t attempted to innovate. There were early Google tie-ins, and an online Yahoo! Current Network. Current has expanded overseas and found its way into 60 million homes. During the 2008 election campaign and the preceding primaries, Current partnered with Twitter to air a hybrid program called “Hack the Debate,” in which viewers’ Tweets would appear on screen as candidates hashed out their differences. And the arrival of former MTV president Mark Rosenthal to the network has brought more changes, and new directions. In 2009, Current TV bucked its own short-doc format with a series of hour-long documentaries on musicians called Embedded. Last year, Will Wright, creator of video game The Sims, announced a show for Current called Bar Karma. It reads like gimmicky interactive TV: viewers, through the channel’s website, “would be able to submit story ideas, create storyboards based on rough outlines from professional producers, and vote for the ideas that are submitted.” Embedded and Bar Karma suggest a network split personality, bound together by their youth target.
Now comes Olbermann to split it all again.
Wow, psychic Jenny Meares can predict the future and review Olbermann before he gets a second of broadcast time.
"Not interesting," how predictable.
Glass houses, mate. Glass houses.
(Could you please, pretty please, do journalism instead of a recounting of your impressions of the latest journalist gossip? Your vacuous topics, writing, and opinions are not doing you any favors here, set amongst the much better work of your peers.
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/nyt_channels_the_handelskammer.php
Just some advice for someone who seems slow to take any.)
#1 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 9 Feb 2011 at 05:43 PM
@Thimbles: I don't think that Joel was criticizing Olbermann's as-yet-unaired program so much as he was writing about Current TV's apparent transition from experimental, voice-of-the-people network to a more mainstream, professional network that employs one of the most prominent names in cable news.
#2 Posted by Justin Peters, CJR on Thu 10 Feb 2011 at 03:05 PM
Great piece, Joel. It'll be interesting to see what really comes from this partnership... and if all of these upcoming changes actually increase the viewership at all.
#3 Posted by Jim, CJR on Thu 10 Feb 2011 at 04:33 PM
No, sorry Justin. He was tainting the waters because he's a gossip who doesn't think Olbermann is "morning joe" enough for tv (he's a fan of morning joe. It's savy, and centrist).
I don't see a point where he called anyone to talk about what their potential plans are, I don't see a single attempt to gather any news, I see a history of current tv gathered by google and a bunch of opinion and gossip slapped on a page.
I see a lazy prejudiced journalist.
Prejudice I can forgive, so long as there's evidence of knowledge and real research going on. There isn't in Meares work..ever.
When it comes to delivering journalistic disappointment, Meares never disappoints. I would love to see the day that he does.
Until then, his work is just a contrast to the superior work of his peers.
http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/nyt_reports_bear_stearns_wasnt.php
#4 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 10 Feb 2011 at 06:43 PM
>Thimbles,
I am sorry to see you feel I tainted the waters with this one, and, to your mind, on many of my other posts. As Justin said, here I was not commenting on the quality of Keith's program or what his new program may be, only suggesting that it was somewhat disappointing that his hiring seems to indicate that Current, which has always been innovative, is now going for a tried, tested, and proven formula. (Perhaps, as you say, pot calling kettle black, but if I constantly worried about that, I wouldn't be able to set finger to keyboard on a journalism review website.)
The Olbermann move, to me, feels less interesting than Current's previous experiments, even if they didn't necessarily work. On a side note: I actually quite enjoyed Countdown and while I do watch Morning Joe occasionally, over brekky, I do so somewhere between angrily and ironically. I have mentioned that program in several posts and never particularly positively.
I have to add that a lot more work went into this post than you suggest, and simply because people weren't quoted, it doesn't mean they weren't spoken to. One of the people I reached out to and who got back to me after publishing, came back with some particularly interesting thoughts, and I put them into the Kicker yesterday.
One thing I agree with you on one hundred percent is the quality of the work that my colleagues produce. Ryan, Clint, Curtis, Dean, Trudy, Felix, Justin, Mike, and Lauren each and every day produce excellent work which I read voraciously and admire and envy. I consider myself lucky to work in the same office and to be published on the same website. If you consider me lucky for that reason as well, I am fine with that. If I serve as a contrast to highlight their work, also, I am fine with that.
Thanks for your thoughts, will take them on board, and hope to disappoint you soon.
#5 Posted by Joel Meares, CJR on Fri 11 Feb 2011 at 10:48 AM
Do you really think it'll be uninteresting? I think it'll be entertaining just to see how much of a failure the show turns out to be!!
@Thimbles
I've seen your ridiculous comments on these pages before and I just can't fathom why you have so much vitriol toward people you don't even know. You're "tainting the waters" with comments that go out of the way to be rude and hurtful.
You need to be banned.
#6 Posted by Cathy Harmon, CJR on Fri 11 Feb 2011 at 11:15 AM
"Thanks for your thoughts, will take them on board, and hope to disappoint you soon."
I hope you understand that I'm not speaking out of a desire to hurt Joel Meares, the screen name above the writings I've seen, but out of a sincere desire to improve journalism in my own way.
As a member of a grossly self damaging species and as a father who has to pass on a world damaged out of our collective ignorance, I say we cannot afford another 20 years of trivial, judgmental, uninformed journalism. If elections and policy weren't decided based on the misperceptions of sloppy journalism, if wars weren't fought based on the the careless words of negligent journalism, if people didn't die based on the fears fostered by dishonest journalism, I wouldn't take the time to type.
I don't want you to fail. I want you succeed in raising the quality of journalism to the place we, as a people, need it to be.
Thanks for the response and I look forward to being disappointed.
#7 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 11 Feb 2011 at 12:43 PM
"Thimbles I've seen your ridiculous comments on these pages before and I just can't fathom why you have so much vitriol toward people you don't even know.
You're "tainting the waters" with comments that go out of the way to be rude and hurtful.
You need to be banned."
Yeah? Well I don't recall a single comment that was rude or hurtful. And furthermore, you're funny looking.
So there.
Sincerely Thimbles
#8 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 11 Feb 2011 at 12:54 PM
As a member of a grossly self damaging species and as a father who has to pass on a world damaged out of our collective ignorance, I say we cannot afford another 20 years of trivial, judgmental, uninformed journalism.
Ugh
#9 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Fri 11 Feb 2011 at 01:00 PM
"Ugh"
That comment was rude and hurtful. Someone protect my feelings and ban that awful man.
PS. I'm thinking of the thousands upon thousands of Iraqis dead for lack of competence, the thousands upon thousand of Americans made homeless for lack of financial vigilance, and the thousands of upon thousands of deaths to come because we let people poison the Gulf of Mexico and we failed to protect workers during the cleanup.
I don't know what motivates you, but if you expect me to care about whether you think I'm a sap for giving a damn...
That ain't happening.
PS. You're even more funny looking than Cathy.
#10 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Fri 11 Feb 2011 at 01:36 PM