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?

	8 Comments »	Email This Post
	, Programming, iO! intranet	Posted at 11:33 am (11 Nov 2008)

At a conference for the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television last Thursday, Hubert Lacroix pointed out that the CBC can not accurately plan its programming on 12 month cycles, and requires a seven year funding plan. The full text of the speech is available here.

He also reiterated that the CBC needs an extra 215 million dollars to maintain quality programming, or $40.00 per capita rather than $33.00 per capita. These requests are based on the February 28 report of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage.

Other highlights of the speech were the fact that he plans to strengthen relations between management and the CBC union, and the fact that the CBC is reliant on ratings and advertising revenue in order to stay viable. The funding increases would help offset some of that reliance.

	Add Comment »	Email This Post
	Executives, Financial, Programming	Posted at 11:06 am (26 May 2008)