On the MTN 17 10:00-11:00PM time slot on Sundays a show called Call-In Karaoke used to play where with the magic of Karaoke Revolution and Chroma Key, television viewers in Minneapolis could call-in and sing on live television while in-studio dancers try to entertain and distract you. It was a hilarious experiment produced by Hamil Griffin-Cassidy. Check out this prime example on YouTube of someone trying to sing Britney Spears’ Toxic. The show became a cult hit: it gained some MySpace friends and Facebook groupies and only those who got their phone timing perfectly could even get in on the show. I got to help out in the studio a few times.
As I posted about six months ago, Comcast bought out Time Warner’s cable market in Minneapolis and some technology changes happened soon after, one of which caused a delay on live broadcasts from MTN. It’s not easy to sing over the phone when what you’re hearing is a few seconds late.
The show evolved into poeTVision, where poems were scrolled across the screen for callers and and people read them. Then they started reading their own poems or rapping.
It got to the point where the show became a semi-controlled free-for-all experiment where callers can choose to say or do anything they want for a period of time. Meanwhile, the sounds and visuals started to become more and more varied and abstract. Now, the “goal,” if there is one, is to create some of the weirdest and most strange television in Minneapolis and letting anyone who calls in help out by saying whatever they want to say. I think it’s working. While Hamil has continued to host and produce the program, he has had various people provide music and direct. I’ve gotten the pleasure of directing the last few episodes and last Sunday was a bonus: four baby kittens were brought in to help. You can watch the entire thing on Blip.tv. Skip around if you don’t want to watch it for an hour. There are portions that are very strange and abstract. Some parts may be hard to watch.
What drives me to this program is that while everything may seem out of order, it’s a realtime experiment on what happens when people, safely in their own homes and without needing to identify themselves are able to broadcast themselves over live television. In a few years, when television and the internet become closer to being the same thing, I think a similar kind of environment that this show creates is going to be a lot more widespread. So while everything might seem of a very low production value, to me it’s really a taste of the future of the weird possibilities in giving individuals a platform to broadcast themselves in a way that’s very different than current conventions of internet blogging, forums, message boards and vlogs. Right now, this show is all about play. I’m glad I’ve been able to participate and help out. Where my mind is though, is that it’s going to be an interesting world soon when more and more people are going to have louder and louder voices. This is just a taste of how weird things could get.
If you’re in Minneapolis and have Comcast Cable, tune in MTN 17 at 10:00PM on Sundays.
As an aside, check out the crew playing with cats after the show. They were apparently rescued “from a crack house” and I believe a couple of them are still looking for homes. They are very playful, healthy and cute. If you know of a good home for a kitten, let me know.
