At the April 4 unveiling of his television network, Current, Al Gore described his new project by saying, “We are about empowering this generation of young people in their 20s, the 18-34 population, to engage in a dialogue of democracy and to tell stories about what’s going [on] in their lives in the dominant media of our time.” He went on to assert that Current would be changing “the way the television medium is used.” Pretty bold statements. While it is common knowledge that the former Vice President is prone to exaggeration, he seems to be onto something here.

The wall between broadcast and interactive has been crumbling for over ten years. Three things have been holding the wall up, but all have been eroding of late. These market changes make Current well timed and positioned to help bring the wall down once and for all.

Old Media, New Fractures
Changes in the habits of major media producers created the first cracks in the wall. Until recently, these producers have dealt with the Internet by simply repurposing broadcast content for the Web. Their uses of the Web followed the evolution of media; the printed word was the initial and primary type of content distributed, then came audio files available for download and streaming, and later, visually compelling video and other forms of rich media. Although they have put richer content on the Web, the producers of this content have continued to package their product for the media they knew best – daily or weekly print and broadcast – not the interactive medium the Internet enabled.

But old media producers have gotten progressively smarter in understanding the value of interactivity. Call-in talk radio shows and telethons gave network producers the first hint. Today, online voting for reality shows and cross-media promotions are showing results in consumer satisfaction, ratings, and marketing campaigns. For example, recently, at the end of an episode of The Apprentice, viewers were encouraged to find the nearest seller of an ice cream created by the Trump wannabes on Yahoo Local. The ice cream sold out across the country in one day. And just as important, Yahoo’s registration databases were able to tell the ice cream maker, Ciao Bella, the demographics of their new found customers.

That story and others like it are making company executives recognize the value of tying broadcast and the Internet together to move people. In partnering with Current, Google clearly sees the potential. Google's co-founder and president of technology, Sergey Brin, remarked in Current’s April 4 press release announcement, that the search engine firm aims to “help this network make the world's information more accessible."

Though ground breaking in itself, Google’s relationship with Current is more interesting than this publicly-stated role reveals.

Twice an hour Google will provide Current viewers with a newscast that is based on the top Google search terms. No longer is a newsroom editor deciding the news you watch. The masses who are seeking out the news will set the lead stories – that is democratization of journalism. But the close tie between search and content leads me to wonder if Google will be offering Current’s advertisers similar market data as that proffered by Yahoo Local to Ciao Bella. There’s another reason to check out Current when it launches August 1st.

The High Speed of Media Empowerment
With old media content producers tearing down their piece of the wall, the next hurdle to overcome was the technological infrastructure itself. For much of the late 90s, start-ups waited for the broadband revolution that would make their business models viable. Roughly five years overdue, broadband penetration is here. According to Nielsen/Netratings more than 55 percent of U.S. homes now have broadband, and around 80 percent of Americans have access to broadband at home or work. The platform is now in place for rich video and audio to be as commonplace as text on the Web.

Current is well positioned to leverage these newly empowered consumers. In fact, Current is no longer calling its viewers “consumers.” In the new world where the media wall has crumbled, they’re called “collaborators.” Current’s vision statement says it is designing a television channel for an audience that is “accustomed to choice, control, and collaboration in everything else they do.” So not only will Current’s newscasts be determined by the audience, much of its broadcast content will be created by the audience. Current’s site is already accepting video that it will run online and eventually on television.

While broadband is critical to sending and receiving rich content, the evolution from “consumers” to “collaborators” wouldn’t be possible if the masses weren’t able to create content. Just as HTML enabled millions to publish online, new digital production tools have lowered the barrier to entry determining who can be high quality content producers. Big media no longer has a monopoly on creating content.

Current is the first television channel to leverage these newly empowered millions by integrating their video content into its business model. What makes Current all the more groundbreaking is that print media outlets are just beginning to think about integrating user-generated content into their models. One example is a beta site recently launched by South Carolina’s BlufftonToday that complements its traditional news coverage with an array of images and text submitted by readers. As these early adopters succeed, we will see their old media followers learn from them by turning even more consumers into collaborators.

The Big Collaborator Takeover
The drive to personally create content and distribute it is only half of the equation for turning consumers into collaborators. The desire for more control of what media people are consuming and when, is just as important. Old media created elaborate programming schedules to determine when and what America would watch or listen to. With iPods and wireless devices in hand, American consumers are pulling the remaining chunks of the wall down.

No longer are people satisfied with one broadcast being pushed to millions. Americans are now collaborators in determining when and what media they consume. Online use of on demand video and audio has increased dramatically. Arbitron’s study Internet and Multimedia 2005: the On-Demand Media Consumer (Download the PDF file) found that as of January 2005, 55 million Americans watched or listened to streaming media online. That is more than double the number of January 2000. More important, it is becoming a regular habit. Twenty million reported that they watched or listened in the past week.

Control of content consumption by users has been a hallmark of the Web, but for television it is a re-invention. Fifty-five percent of those surveyed by Arbitron said that of new media technologies their TiVo/DVR had the biggest impact on their lives, second only to broadband.

Broadcast and Interactive Come Together
So what does a future without the wall look like, and why is Current well positioned? When you find yourself watching television, surfing the Web and listening to music you have downloaded all at the same time, you see the immediate future and you are sitting where the wall used to be. BigResearch has been watching simultaneous media usage grow for the last several years. Their most recent study from March, 2004 shows that 66 percent of television viewers go online while watching television. Fifty-seven percent say they listen to the radio while online.

A media channel tied so closely to its online presence is well positioned to control 100 percent of mind-share during their time using both television and Internet. Current may be one of the first but I doubt it will be the last. Without the wall, the television, the personal computer and the iPod are now finally positioned to be seamlessly integrated.

The wall has come down and we are just beginning to see the one-way broadcast model become a two-way street...and that is no exaggeration.

Chuck DeFeo was ecampaign manager for the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign.