• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, April 21, 2008

SteveSmith stays up-to-date with Current's Joshua Katz

The fledgling cable channel Current TV nabbed an Emmy last year for its novel use of viewer-created content, or VC² in the nomenclature of the youth-oriented news and culture outlet. Al Gore and partner Joel Hyatt have been the high-profile front men for the project, but beneath the gloss scores of staffers collaborate with amateur videographers to create almost a third of the short-form "pods" of nonfiction material during the programming week. Joshua Katz, president of marketing, explains how that collaborative structure informs both the content and the commercials.

How much of your programming involves these user-submitted "pods" of content?

About 30 to 35 percent, in any given week. We are aspiring to increase that so that in a couple of years or less we will look at UGC being 50 percent or more of our overall programming mix.

What sort of submission typically comes in?

It can take any form. One of my favorites was from a settler in Gaza where they were dismantling those settlements. This contributor was right at the temple while all the Western media was 1,000 yards away, held back by a police barrier. Our contributor was there as they brought the Torah out and we watched the settlers weeping as they took it out. Really powerful stuff. In "Street Style," we literally go out on the streets of a town, from Sydney to Houston, and look at what young adults are wearing. It is all viewer-created and it looks at how style comes from the street and not from the fashion houses.

But there is a lot of collaboration as well. You put up topic assignments - even instruct people on how to make better content.

It starts online with a training manual, on everything from storytelling advice by Ira Glass and Robert Redford to what type of microphone to use for the best sound. If you want to know
how to create television, here is a basic user's guide. We have music libraries to select quality music to put behind your pod, and there is assistance with editing, and graphics support. We have an entire department focused on that. What is also fascinating to me is the community. Because they upload their pieces online and people vote on them, there is also a robust commentary. I have to tell you that the eye of the community is great in terms of understanding television and in what the audience is interested in seeing. They collaborate with themselves.

How is your basic ad model different?

There is significantly less commercial clutter than any other network. We are differentiated with our ICBMs or isolated consumer brand messages. When you get involved with the network you are not just buying spots and
dots, or a single unit. You are buying an integration with one of the 54 pod
families. Their logo is integrated with the opening of that pod family and at the end of the pod family there is only that advertiser's commercial that runs directly after the pod. Then we go right back into programming. It is a kind of focus and concentration and integration you won't find anywhere else.

Your viewers also make ads for your sponsor clients in response to specific assignments. How do these projects evolve?

There is the option of having a VCAM or viewer-created ad message. We sit down with our clients that want to do VCAMs to understand what their objectives are, and collectively we create a creative brief similar to giving an assignment to an ad agency. We put that brief on TV and online and provide assets, whether it is logos or music or key copy points that have to be mentioned - whatever the advertiser needs to have highlighted. Our community of VCAM producers often make very fresh, innovative and authentic advertising. Our viewers come back to us and say they prefer VCAM ads nine to one over traditional advertising.

What share of spots
are VCAMs?

It varies, but I can tell you that advertisers who have participated in the VCAM program generally convert about 50 percent of their inventory to viewer-created ad messages.

Who have been the
most active?

Toyota, T-Mobile and L'Oreal. L'Oreal's mens' brand is running a 100 percent VCAM schedule right now.

Any of this creative migrate off Current TV?

Absolutely. You can earn $1,000 if your commercial runs on Current and up to $60,000 if an advertiser takes it and runs it in every medium out there. L'Oreal placed one online and within two weeks it had over 2 million views.

As news and media outlets struggle to support their content creation in a fragmented landscape, how does Current TV's model fit into traditional news media?

I don't know that I can answer that directly, because we are not a traditional news outlet, so I don't understand what they are thinking. We are flattered to see that many of the innovations we created have been adopted in ways like iReport [from CNN]. Our own journalism group, called the Vanguard Journalists, are 12 interesting young reporters who will go to places we don't want vc² producers to go - to Somalia or into the heart of ethnic street gangs in Russia. And one of our reporters, Kaj Larsen, is an ex-Navy Seal and he had himself waterboarded. That piece not only generated significant press but a ton of commentary about it, and that commentary was fed back to the network. So we have run his piece on air and frequently we will run it with a counterpoint that says waterboarding is a legitimate form of interrogation. For us, this is the heart and soul of what we do. It is not about economic efficiency. It is about making sure that the voice of our audience is accurately and fairly represented, and understanding that the editorial point of view has to be shared and collaborative. We are about a conversation with our audience. We want that conversation in the pods they create.