alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

October 23, 2007

Current TV

by AltHippo @ 1:26 am. Filed under Uncategorized

I’ve been following Current TV since it began broadcast on August 1, 2005. I had more than casual interest. I was trying to put together a weekly program using shorts from the Cambridge Fringe Festival, interviews with comics, and flash animations I’d produced under the banner of FringeTV around the same time frame.

The first time I checked out the Current TV website, I knew they were doing what I had wanted to do. In other circumstances I would probably have been jealous, but this was Al Gore after all, and we were all still coping with a post Bush v. Gore world.

I watched short documentaries of people sharing their experiences of what it meant to get hassled for wearing an ipod on the streets of New York, or protests for affordable housing in Paris, or why an olympic gymnast took up skateboarding. It was all well done, without being slick.

Unlike YouTube, I could watch it, and not be turned off. Was it edgy at the beginning? Yes, in the sense that the content came from their viewers, but no, they avoided controversial political topics. That was 2 years ago, though, which is like dog years in internet time. Or the time between Red Sox world series victories to a Red Sox fan.

Eventually, I started to watch the Current TV cable broadcast. At first it was to waste time between doing other things. Then the Joe Hanson shorts really caught on with me. I started to look forward to the next time he’d bring up obscure literary allusions to red necks. The coverage overseas was very good. I never thought about fashion in Hong Kong before, but it made me realize more than ever before that DC doesn’t actually have fashion in the conventional sense of that word. And, Laura Ling’s coverage of the situation vis a vis Turkey and Iraq has been very informative. If Judy Woodruff ever watches Laura Ling’s mega pods, I’m concerned that she may retire. Okay, that wasn’t a concern so much as a sincere wish.

Tonight was the first time I realized that given a choice between PBS and Current TV, I go with the latter. With the notable exception of Bill Moyers and Frontline. And make no mistake, Moyers and Frontline are the crown jewels in non-fiction television right now. But, they’re not 24 hours a day.

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hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.

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95. Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.)
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