So, I had noticed Current TV online last week but I wasn't chomping at the bit for it to launch. I've been too busy to pay attention to when new cable channels are firing up. But then last night I was taking a break and briefly channel surfing and saw Current TV right there on the channel guide for Direct TV. So I checked it out.

It's an interesting experiment. The basic idea is: short videos submitted by anyone. This concept is a double-edged sword. They call these shorts "pods." Possibly the coolest thing is the progress bar in the lower left corner, so if you don't like something, you can tell how long you have to wait before it's over.

There is an almost bewildering variety of "pods," from weird fluff pieces to heavy investigative reporting. (examples: There's one 2-part piece about suicide in Japan that's really great. There's a disturbing quick look at an African model bragging about her ass. There's a boring pod about how to buy real estate.) They divide things into categories and show pods from each category on a regular rotation, but they don't have a lot of content so there's a lot of repetition. All this is punctuated by young cute hosts and hostesses who say dorky things about each piece and stand there looking cute and dorky, in varying proportions of the 2.

I'm not sure what to think yet. There's a lot of other blogging about it going on, including one blogger that basically described the whole first day at the Broadcast and Cable blog. It will be interested to see how things develop. One observation and suggestion I would make is this: despite the variety of subject matter, all the pods seem to have a really similar narrative voice and videography style and production value. It's almost like all the producers went to the same film school at the same time, or something. I wonder if a lot of these first pods were produced in-house, or maybe they "finish" submissions with their own graphics and color correcting and stuff so everything looks the same. But that seems to defeat the purpose... If Current wants to be about everyone sending in stuff, about the multiplicity of media creators out there, then production values should reflect that variety. It shouldn't all look so slick and isotropic. However, maybe as they get more submissions their content will start to be more varied in look and form.