From a revolutionary 30-minute television news show to a reality TV audience-poll Q&A sessions, ABC’s Nightline has really come a long way since 1979. Nightline Signals the Twitterization of TV News [BNET]. Apparently the one-time must-watch series, which has struggled with anchors and formats since Ted Koppel departed, will premiere a Twitter-based interview format in which viewers and Tweet questions to the show’s talent and guests. They have even revised the logo — and renamed the digital version of the program — as NightTline.
Now, I am a social media devotee and believe that “social streaming” will have a profound effect on news consumption and distribution. But this is just plain silly. ABC describes NightTline as “a new half-hour digital program hosted by the show’s anchors and correspondents that provides a forum for viewers to simultaneously discuss and debate the news of the day through the prism of Twitter.” That’s almost as bad as “town hall” debate formats in electoral candidate debates. We don’t need any more platforms for common people to garner uncommon celebrity status. And unscientific debates via Twitter, like Web polls in general, tell us nothing reliable about voter attitudes, consumer preferences or the like. So the only point of this Twitter experiment is buzz.
Buzz isn’t bad, of course. But buzz isn’t news!