When Media Collide

Made-by-Viewers TV
Seeking a Youthful Audience, Little Cable Channel Presents Features Filmed by Neophytes

By CHRISTOPHER LAWTON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL December 13, 2005

What some people really want to do is direct.

After a decade of the Internet revolutionizing the way people communicate and spend their leisure time, a growing number of consumers are going further -- creating entertainment and other media "content" on their own.

Cable networks, radio stations -- even advertisers -- are embracing such "user-generated content" and serving it up, hoping to appeal to new and younger audiences that are impatient with standard media fare.

This new genre of Do-It-Yourself Media harks back in some ways to public-access cable TV, to funny home videos and radio call-in shows. But it's slicker and more sophisticated. For a generation of young people raised on the Internet, it is second nature to express themselves in new ways.

These aren't passive consumers: They think they have something to say and they don't see why they can't do what the big media companies are doing.

In a series this week, The Wall Street Journal explores how Do-It-Yourself Media in various forms is creating a kind of parallel media universe.

Today's article describes Al Gore's Current TV, which is helping to fill its 24 hours of daily programming with films made by viewers. Subsequent articles will look at how advertisers are soliciting ad ideas from their consumers, how cable operators are asking viewers to contribute material for dating services and real-estate channels and how phone companies are encouraging contributions to video logs.

The cable channel's offerings are best described as eclectic: among them, a profile of a man who jumps from cliffs and bridges, produced by 30-year-old viewer Mark Rinehart; a first-person account of rescuing Hurricane Katrina survivors in a flooded New Orleans by 24-year-old viewer Jared Arsement; and a feature produced by San Francisco college student Aaron Nemoyten about a local rock band.

Such is television à la Current, the cable channel partly owned by former Vice President Al Gore. Hoping to lure young viewers who have grown disillusioned with traditional media outlets, Current is taking a different approach to current-affairs TV -- one that goes well beyond news and into lifestyle and other subjects. Rather than relying solely on reporters and editors to produce stories, the channel is trying to generate up to half of its programming from members of the public. It uses its Web site to gather feedback from the public on what it should air and pays modestly for those videos it chooses to run.

Current's unorthodox approach shows the effect of the Internet on media habits. Use of blogs and community Web sites have changed attitudes to journalism: Young people now frequently use the Web to post material ranging from diaries about their lives to comments on news events -- sometimes even stitching together video clips to enhance their commentary. Blogs offer interactive and unfiltered content very different from the rigorously edited and highly polished news coverage offered by the mainstream media.

"The Internet is a welcome breath of fresh air which re-establishes a highly interactive participatory medium that has even lower barriers to entry than the print medium," said Mr. Gore in an interview. He added that a "growing number of talented young people in their 20s...have videocameras and laptop editing systems and are increasingly conversant with how to express themselves in the television medium."

Mr. Gore, who is chairman of Current, said he and entrepreneur Joel Hyatt came up with the idea of a channel relying on consumer contributions. The two first met to discuss working together after Mr. Gore's campaign for president in 2000. Last year, backed by a group of investors, they bought a little-known cable channel from Vivendi Universal SA for about $70 million. They are now working to make it widely available: Current can be seen in only about 20 million homes, whereas most major cable channels are available in 80 million.

The channel isn't yet rated by Nielsen Media Research, which makes it a tougher sell for advertisers. While Current has had some luck getting distribution with Time Warner Inc. and satellite-TV company DirecTV Group Inc., it hasn't yet won over Comcast Corp., the biggest cable operator. To put pressure on Comcast, Current held a rally outside Comcast headquarters in Philadelphia. Mr. Hyatt, Current's chief executive, says the channel's problem is that it lacks the leverage of a larger media company to urge cable companies to carry the new channels.

Comcast says that Current is available in some of its homes and that the company is in discussions with Current about their interest in additional distribution.

To implement the consumer-generated programming approach, Messrs. Gore and Hyatt are relying on David Neuman, a onetime NBC entertainment executive who oversaw programming at Time Warner's CNN in 2001 to 2003. Mr. Neuman, programming president at Current, contends that young people can't relate to mainstream TV news because its coverage of issues is too "inside baseball."

He promises that Current will "cover the big picture" for its target audience of 18- to 34-year-olds.

Mr. Neuman says he doesn't want the channel to look like public-access television, where anyone who wants to be on TV can broadcast whatever they want. He promises that Current will carefully select only compelling stories that are as "truthful" as those aired on the major broadcast networks -- although that doesn't necessarily mean highly polished. Current employs three creative executives who help viewers put the finishing touches on their videos.

The result is a lively mix of stories aimed at giving viewers a flavor, if not comprehensive coverage, of world events. The quality is uneven. Mr. Arsement's feature on New Orleans looked a little like a home movie, with jerky footage and personal anecdotes of his time spent in the city.

Staff-produced stories, such as a feature about American soldiers who have deserted to Canada rather than follow orders shipping them to Iraq, have a more professional feel. But few pieces match anything seen on established TV networks.

The mixed bag of Current's journalism highlights a challenge facing the channel as it tries to make viewer-contributed journalism into an advertiser-supported business. What attracts young people -- a raw unpolished look -- may not be to an advertiser's liking.

"Most traditional marketers will be challenged by the notion of consumer-generated content, because it is so foreign to the media world we know, where studios and networks create content that is effectively approved by advertisers," says Tim Hanlon, senior vice president/director for the Starcom MediaVest Group, the media-buying unit of Publicis.

Current's sales and marketing president, Anne Zehren, acknowledges that some marketers were initially skeptical about the concept for the channel, but she says those concerns have passed since Current was launched. A few prominent marketers have signed on as sponsors including L'Oréal Paris, a unit of L'Oréal USA Inc., and Sony Electronics, a unit of Sony Corp. Both say they trust Current to weed out inappropriate material. It remains to be seen how long they will stick around if Current fails to expand.

Ms. Zehren says a major priority of the channel is to broaden the types of people who contribute. So far, only about one-third of Current's programming is coming from outsiders, many of whom are filmmakers or free-lance journalists.

To attract new talent, Current has been visiting public venues such as clubs, film festivals and concerts in major cities around the country. At one such event recently, the Big Apple Film Festival in New York, representatives circulated through a crowd leaving a movie, handing out fliers and directing people to a Current van parked outside where more information was available. On this particular night, it was too cold for more than a handful of people to stop by.

Contributors needn't be viewers. Mr. Nemoyten, the college student who profiled a rock band, doesn't even have cable and learned about Current this year in part from an ad posted on the Internet announcing a contest for the best five-minute video. The prize: a $3,000 budget to produce segments to air on Current.

A 21-year-old cinema major at San Francisco State University, Mr. Nemoyten saw an opportunity. He shot footage of a local band, interviewed its members and entered a video in the contest. He didn't win the prize, but Current selected the piece to run on the channel, paying him $250. The video subsequently aired more than a dozen times a week for six weeks.

And that was just the start for Mr. Nemoyten. Current hired him to help shoot a second story, about a group of musicians raising money for charity, which he has completed. Not that he wants to be a journalist long term. His preference, he says, is to produce narrative film.