Al Jazeera English is planning to launch a news talk show called “The Stream” with deep hooks to social media. Instead of the traditional way of producing a show with teleprompter copy, the producers will “script” the broadcast with a string of tweets, Facebook posts, YouTube videos and Flickr photos.
In fact, they’re even considering using Storify.com — which lets you assemble social media content into a story — to script the show (they’re already using it on the show’s beta website here.) The folks at Wired saw a screen test, and they write:
The hosts bantered with each other and with in-studio guests, but also responded to viewers’ @ replies, played YouTube videos, and Skyped with social media mavens around the world. The studio was liberally sprinkled with monitors, and the show frequently cut to fullscreen tweets while the hosts read the 140-character updates out loud, hash tags and all.
The biggest challenge for shows that try to integrate social media is trying to adapt an interactive display into a television world. Tweets and YouTube clips and Skype interviews can often look a little ugly and disjointed on the air, but it looks like The Stream won’t be overly concerned with attaining TV perfection. They’re also letting social media drive the show, instead of trying to tack it on.
It will be interesting to see what happens. The show launches in May.
