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Critique 3_Current TV: an example of User Created Content (UCC) on TV

How would you feel when you watch ABC’s “America’s Funniest Home Videos” on TV?

Hold on. Don’t answer my question yet. Kindly answer this more specific question: how much would you enjoy if you have to watch the video clips submitted by viewers only? There are no amusing “interruptions” by host Tom Bergeron.

This imagination came up to me when I watched Current TV that is mostly filled with “View Created Content: VC2 (VC square)”. To watch YouTube-like clips on living room TV discourages my satisfactory experience in the following senses.

First of all, watching TV – traditional, box-typed, static, appointment TV – can be considered a “push” service. This “push” service does not emphasize delivery of content on viewer’s interaction. A push service is more triggered by events rather than viewer’s active engagement in mining content. In short, viewers are passive, and are lying on a couch and waiting for amusement from the box.

In contrast, “pull” service presupposes that viewers actively grope for their “cup of tea” and therefore service delivery is set off by viewers’ interaction. This is why digital media technologies with search engines are best fit for this “pull” service.

Unlike “pull” service, in “push” typed media, viewers are expecting to meet people who live in a different planet: celebrities. It is a long embedded presumption that we take for granted. Current TV, shying away from movie stars, singers, anchors, comedians, or issue makers, cannot attract “couch” viewers as efficiently as it wants.

Secondly, Current TV as a network media is supposed to position itself to be an agenda setter. But has it ever advanced any “scoop” that centers itself to the issue? Albert Gore, co-founder of Current TV, declared that Current TV would not put forward any political points of view. Fine. But this does not prevent him from proposing any social issues about which viewers can discuss. This clearly dwarfs Current TV in constrast toother networks such as ABC, NBC, or CBS.

Finally, I think that TV viewers expect fancy visual images that they cannot experience on small screens such as laptops or mobiles. Evolving technologies, HD for example, suggests that viewers can expect more from the box. VC2 s on Current TV, however, rarely employs costly special effects. It discourages viewers from grabbing a remote control to watch it.

Gore’s name may have attracted people who were curious about his new venture, but I think it was just at its startup. I am doubtful if there is anybody who can quickly pop off any “killer content” from Current TV, as they do “Larry King Live” from CNN, “CSI” from CBS, or “Frontline” from PBS.