This week's Noah's Bark podcast features an interview with Chloe Sladden, VP of Special Project Programming at Current TV. Chloe and I talked about "Hack the Debate," a collaboration between Current and Twitter which allows viewers to post "tweets" - in this case, short commentaries on the debate - some of which are chosen to run in a constant stream on the bottom portion of Current's TV broadcasts of the debates.
Last night I watched the second Presidential debate on Current and posted my own tweets from my mobile phone. None of my tweets (http://twitter.com/kravvykrav is me, http://twitter.com/phonedog is the official PDog stream) made it on air, but it still made for an interesting experience, watching the debate all interactive style.
A few quick thoughts/constructive critiques on the broadcast:
1. Overall the "user hacks" made the debate much more entertaining to watch. I'm not sure if that's a good thing in and of itself, but the sometimes insightful, sometimes snarky, and sometimes laughably useless tweets lended some entertainment value to what, for me, was another frustrating moment in the political process. Enough with talking about how awesome America and your respective voting records are, already.
2. Tweets showed up on the bottom third of the screen and then floated up into the main broadcast area as they disappeared in favor of new ones. I found this needlessly distracting - it's a neat visual powered by an innovative use of Flash on broadcast TV, but it distracted from the overall content of the program. Maybe I'm just old, but I found it hard enough to split my focus between the "river" of user-generated commentary and the actual debate. Having to deal with misspelled tweets floating up into Obama's face didn't help matters.
3. I spent A LOT of time trying to come up with the magic formula to getting one of my tweets on air. I failed.
4. Someone called "amytheblack" got more than one of her tweets on air. How come?
5. I'm not entirely sure what criteria Current used in deciding which tweets to put on air. I did recognize several Current staffers' user names associated with tweets that did make to to the screen. I wonder how much they felt the need to shape the discourse beyond the occasional question thrown out to the audience under the official Current username.
6. I was pleasantly surprised to see a fair number of tweets supporting both candidates. I honestly thought the audience would be overwhelmingly pro-Obama, given the nature of Current's content/vibe and the fact that Al Gore is one of their co-founders. The tweet river was pro-Obama, but not nearly as overwhelmingly so as I'd expected.
7. The whole process reminded me of how nearly impossible it is to effectively split my attention between two things at the same time. Shift my attention back and forth, rapid-fire? Sure. Actually divide it in a continuously worthwhile way? Not so much. I don't know how the kids do it, texting and talking and watching TV all at the same time.
Anyone else out there catch the Current broadcast? You can see the highlights, complete with tweets, on Current's site.
