Current TV

World Screen Weekly, April 26, 2007

COUNTRY: U.S., U.K. and Ireland

LAUNCH DATE: August 1, 2005 in the U.S.

DISTRIBUTION: Current is distributed in approximately 50 million homes worldwide, with about 38 million homes in the U.S. and 12 million homes in the U.K. and Ireland.

DESCRIPTION: Current is the first television network in history whose programming is supplied in part by the same audience who watches it. Targeted at 18- to 34-year-olds, Current is, in fact, created by, for and with young adults. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore founded the company with Joel Hyatt.

CO-FOUNDER & CEO: Joel Hyatt

COO: Mark Goldman

PRESIDENT, PROGRAMMING: David Neuman

PROGRAMMING STRATEGY: Current places a heavy emphasis on viewer-created content or VC�. Most of the programming airing on the network is offered as short-form nonfiction “pods,” which are short videos that tell a story, profile a character or share an idea. Creators can submit a pod to the network’s website, where registered members in the online Current community can watch and greenlight pods for broadcast on the network, as well as leave constructive comments for the creators.

“Our underlying philosophy is that any piece that is absolutely compelling makes it to television, whether a viewer creates it or we create it,” says Mark Goldman, the COO of Current.

When the channel first launched, viewer-created content had comprised only 20 percent of the channel’s schedule. Now, viewer-created content has grown to about a third of its schedule and according to Goldman, the network has “every expectation of growing that further.”

Viewer-created content is also drawn from other categories such as Current Journalism Pods, which are news segments; promos for the network; V-CAMS (viewer-created ad-messages) and Raw Intel, which is raw footage caught with a video camera. The network plays pods on all subjects, in all styles, ranging from hot trends in technology, fashion, music and videogames, to pressing issues such as the environment, relationships, parenting, finance, politics and spirituality. According to Goldman, the topics cover everything that a young adult would face in their lives. “We let them have the opportunity to share those experiences through television and we have created this open-source TV platform for them.”

While Current screens every submission and rejects anything that has hate messages in it, pornography, or obvious copyright violations, Goldman acknowledges that the Current community determines which pods make it on to the television screen. “We don’t filter in advance for whether we think the piece is worth seeing on TV or not, we let our community have that say,” says Goldman. “That’s part of the process of democratizing the media and letting voices come to the surface.”

V-CAMS, which are ads created by viewers for Current TV’s sponsors that air on the network, have also proven to be “phenomenally successful” says Goldman. In fact, Goldman says that advertisers such as Sony, L’Oreal, Toyota, Johnson & Johnson and Pepsi have responded enthusiastically to Current TV. “We have really offered them something different. We’ve offered them the opportunity to tie into a pod category that most resonates with the audience that they are trying to reach, which is a very unique proposition, rather than throwing their ad into a series of ads.” The network’s unique scheduling format also allows advertisers to air long-form commercial messages up to three minutes long, which Goldman likens to “little movies.”

On March 12, the channel launched in the U.K. and Ireland on BSkyB. Goldman hopes that the channel’s recent exposure in the U.K. will spur on the expansion into other markets worldwide. This was one of the original goals that Gore and Hyatt had when creating Current TV, as Goldman explains, “to create a global conversation and really get people to share experiences and talk through television.”

WHAT’S NEW: Over the next 12 to 18 months, Goldman says that Current’s main priorities are concentrated in three areas: building awareness of the channel; expanding into new platforms that will allow people to access the content in new ways; and creating a global platform to “get all sorts of different voices and perspectives involved.”

WEBSITE: www.current.tv

—By Irene Lew