Just a few days after Current board chairman Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Price, the youth-oriented news and information cable network launched its new Web site Current.com. Unlike the old site, Current.com goes beyond a TV station feeder system in its offerings. With an increased degree of user involvement and social networking, Current now looks to be a full fledged multinetwork media solution.

The concept of Current.com, explains Chief Executive Joel Hyatt, came out of surveys showing that 70% of Current TV viewers had a laptop open as they watched. Hyatt describes Current as:

“…a new form of social media where viewers can create, engage, and influence news and information”

Current’s goal is to give viewers a greater voice in media while also giving them context for videos on the site. The network, which already allowed professional videographers to submit video news segments, moves several steps further with the new site by soliciting user feedback over the Web and converting submissions into online news and pieces for broadcast. What is striking about Current’s latest developments is how they address issues of brand control, dual-screen viewing, and interactive media consumption patterns.

Brand control and messaging

Advertisers are intrigued by the potential impact of online video when it comes to messaging and brand awareness, but they are also nervous about control. Video spreads rapidly across the Web, particularly when it is creative and quirky. How do companies get in on the online video trend without breaking the bank, spreading the wrong message through repurposed TV content that falls flat, or having their brand name show up next to objectionable or irrelevant content?

Current offers one possible solution. Gore asserts that Current’s platform gives advertisers the best of both worlds: brand control and zero production costs. Video ads created by consumers must adhere to certain guidelines and advertisers screen the clips to decide whether they should be distributed beyond the Current network. Additionally, Current.com acts as a hub where people can watch ads for the sake of watching ads—viewers are drawn to the clips in part because other users generate one third of the advertising content. When your brand has an ad on a site like Current.com, users may find it more entertaining—Current viewers prefer Vcams (viewer created videos) to traditionally produced spots by a 9-1 margin. Because of the eclectic, interactive nature of the Current network, advertisers may fret less over whether or not an ad will show up next to poorly targeted or objectionable content—at least while the ad is within the Current network. The question of control rears its head once more when the advertiser opts to move an ad into the wider Web.

Integrated two-screen experience

Just as the explosion of web video has advertisers excited yet hesitant, the TV industry is looking for how best to handle the competition and opportunity Web video presents. Current, thus far, is a success story of dual screen and dual industry integration. Realizing that the vast majority of their viewers watch Current programming while using the Internet, Current now actively acknowledges this dual screen viewing. By making the two screens complementary to one another Current provides viewers with an experience that mutually reinforces both TV and Internet platforms. Current does not stream online, so to enhance the web experience users tune in to their TV; those watching on their television set find out they can engage online, so they open their laptops and participate. There is no live feed of the Current TV broadcast on the Web—the cable and satellite companies were not fans of the idea—meaning Web users must turn on their TV to watch; the full Current experience is truly multiplatform.

The way we twenty-somethings want our media

Gore maintains that the best way to reach the younger web-savvy audience is to let us help create the content. Right now Current presumes an incredibly active consumer—the draws of the network and the site are interactivity, topic breadth and, I would argue, brevity of individual clips. There is also the chance that your content could make it onto the TV channel, allowing for the type of exposure my generation seems so taken with from our live journals to Facebook profiles to the videos we upload of ourselves doing just about anything onto YouTube. As Rafe Needleman contends:

“Current milks our fascination with being broadcast for all it’s worth.”

Still, in its present iteration Current—as a dual screen, interactive, multinetwork media product—reaches only a narrow population segment. “This is about being more actively involved in the news,” said Gartner analyst Mike McGuire, continuing, “It presumes a pretty active consumer as opposed to a passive one.” The challenge for Current will be to expand their audience while maintaining the vivacity of their content and the conversational nature of their programming.