Richard Stursberg has announced a partnership between Al Gore’s Current TV and the CBC to launch a new web site and digital channel called Current Canada.

Current TV is both web site and TV channel. Visitors to the web site are encouraged to essentially act as producers and vote to filter what will appear on the TV channel. The users can also submit content, which makes up about one third of the TV channel’s on-air material.

“It collapses the distinction between the programmers and the audience, so that the audience becomes the programmers. Stursberg said yesterday. “You have to think of it not as a conventional broadcast network, but as something utterly flattened. It’s much more like a social network.”

Stursberg also added that this is not the CBC’s version of YouTube. “This is different in the sense that this is actually programmed. [Youtube] is not programmed.”

His remarks make me think of Mark Cuban’s distinction between the internet and TV. “TV is about getting away from hassles and relaxing. Its about choosing to be entertained, educated or informed. Its not about working to do any of these,” Cuban said a few years back.

Watching television is a lean-back exercise. You sit on your couch, eat popcorn and zone out in front of the tube.

The internet, especially video on the internet, is the opposite. It’s about searching, grousing, clicking around. It’s 51 seconds of a dog on skateboard.

Watching video on the internet is a hunched-over-the-keyboard lean-forward exercise.

So what is Current TV? It is both. And that’s a challenge. It’s asking viewers to both lean forward and lean back, both filtering online and then watching on TV.

So will it work? I don’t know. It has been picked up the U.K. and Italy, so it has had some success.

It is the best model? I don’t think so.

What do you think?

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	, Programming, iO! intranet	Posted at 11:33 am (11 Nov 2008)

Those management appointment notices, corporate news releases, and policy announcements that flow into your Groupwise will be cut by about 80% when the CBC’s new intranet launches shortly.

Two years in the making, the new intranet — named iO! — will feature “role-based personalization.” This means that the site will automatically detect what media- or business-line you work in and which region you’re in. Relevant information will then bubble up to the front page.

Here is your first glimpse at the CBC’s new employee intranet which will launch soon — really soon {ahem} .

“I’m hoping there’s a big dropoff [when it launches] on emails from English services, corporate communications, French communications,” said CBC communications executive Kevin Payan told InsideTheCBC.com. “We want to take stuff out of Groupwise, start using the portal, and reinvigorate what’s going on with a fresh tone and fresh style, as opposed to the traditional executive memo.”

The CBC has hired an editorial director for the intranet who will re-write, in a more “human” tone, news releases and policy announcements from the CBC.

In time, individual users will be able to customize the page at a much more granular level.
“It’ll help you get through the reams of information coming into Groupwise mailboxes right now. You’ll get to pick what bubbles up,” said Angela Wissink, director of CBC portal services.

As well, the site will have some limited feedback ability. Employees will be encouraged to email in comments and feedback, and the intranet’s editorial director will republish a summary of comments received.

In time, the portal may supplant this blog, but for now InsideTheCBC.com will stay as is, says CBC’s vice-president of communications, Bill Chambers. “The blog is free-flowing, agenda-free. It’s as broadly based as the CBC. I see the portal and the blog as complimentary.” Stories from the blog will appear on the front page of iO!

When it launches, iO! will become the default page on all CBC web browsers (which, sadly, still languish at IE6).

(Incidentally, although the site is an intranet, in CBC-language it will be referred to as a “portal.” Because that’s the way we roll.)

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	About This Blog, iO! intranet	Posted at 2:26 pm (18 Feb 2008)