Current TV, network for the Pod People
Watching CURRENT TV is like sticking
your head up a 20 inch cast iron soil pipe and letting someone beat on it with a
5-pound ball peen hammer!
"We want to be the television home page for the Internet generation ." With its debut Monday [August 1st], Current TV will be judged by the same mundane standards as other networks - on whether its programming can hold a viewer's interest.
Every half-hour, Current promises a news update using data from Google on news stories most frequently searched for on the Web. "We have no illusions about the fact that our product has to be compelling," said David Neuman, Current's programming director. "We also believe it has to be unique. Who wants to watch the seventh clone of a different network?"
Current TV is not a "clone". It’s crap!
Because it’s crap, it’s embarrassing to see Deepak Chopra involved. Whether you dig his his metaphysics or not, the man is a fine rhetoritician. Sticking him into the odd spot to prate 30 second dichos is absurd. Even Ben Franklin got off a lot of bad aphorisms in his day. We just remember the good ones.
There isn’t exactly a stack of content, yet. A legitimate start-up problem. I haven’t managed to tolerate more than six or eight minutes at a time — over several attempts around the clock — yet, half of the “pods” I’ve seen [their obvious try to capture iPod spin] have marched past more than once. They’re designed for 18 to 34 year olds, all right. As long as they have the attention span of a cricket on amphetamines.
The 8mm revolution in 1965, was based on film instead of video, of course. Tens of thousands of middle-class high school and college kids were “set free” to create a visual hymn to youth and change. Talent, knowledge and training ended up being the requisite qualities, back then. They still are. The persistence of self-concern that ends up captured by video beginners may be, “totally touching”, man. “Boring” also comes to mind.
Posted: Wed - August 3, 2005 at 06:41 AM