:: the democratization of tv :: ::

Uncle Al wants You.
To help him revolutionize TV. (But he won't say exactly how.)
BY AMRITA SIDHU

The ad for "The Best New Job in TV" featured two poster children of cool: a young man with a tattooed arm clutching a video camera, and a young woman wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with a paraphrased version of the George Orwell epigram: "In a time of universal deceit, to tell the truth is a revolutionary act." The symbolism was designed to be hip and to appeal to young people who might be interested in working for INdTV...

...Last May, [former Vice President Al] Gore and [Joel] Hyatt paid a reported $70 million for Canadian cable news network Newsworld International, which reaches about seventeen million US homes. Their stated goal was to create programming by and for the demographically desirable 18- to 34-year-old market...

...[INdTV aspire] to counteract the purported impact of media consolidation by handing control of the airwaves to a creatively empowered new generation. Until recently, the network said little more about its programming goals, but Gore's apparent interest in the onetime MTV video diary Unfiltered offered an early clue into INdTV's approach. Unfiltered was real grassroots television, a program whose producers selected its story ideas based upon calls from actual viewers...

...This seemingly revolutionary prospect inspired hordes of young people to apply for a job as one of the network's fifty "digital correspondents." INdTV began a national search last August through film schools and postings on Web sites such as Craigslist, MediaBistro.com, and Filmmaker.com...

...[Michael] Rosenblum said Gore was keenly interested in his ideas about the "democratization of television," which he articulated in the mission statement for DV Dojo, his New York video training school. The phrase soon became an INdTV buzzword. "In the beginning, they just wanted to talk about the 'democratization of television,'" Rosenblum said in a December interview. "Al had a lot of input in the beginning. He really dug the democratization of TV thing and made it his own"...

...The network's Web site became the focal point of all the action. INdTV called it a video blog because the written postings by employees -- mainly journalist Gotham Chopra, the son of spiritual guru Deepak Chopra -- were supplemented by occasional video postings. These communications were meant to keep applicants abreast of the recruitment process and to explain the INdTV mission. Before and after submitting their applications, visitors to the site could read the text, watch the videos, and write their own responses to posts by staff or one another...

:: read the full article here :: ::

:: learn about MTV's Unfiltered here :: ::