For the 2008 presidential elections, Current knew it had to do something different. The media company, headquartered in San Francisco, would receive the same live feed of the debates as every other broadcaster. Unless Current distinguished its coverage, viewers would have no particular reason to tune in.

As they cast around for ideas, Current staffers noticed something interesting during the conventions. When the candidates gave live speeches, there were surges of commentary on Twitter. “A lot of us are Twitter users,” says Current’s vice president of strategy, Robin Sloan, “and we saw this real-time commentary track that suggested a parallel to the commentary you normally hear on the news.”

Current realized that if people were twittering about the conventions, they would definitely comment on the debates. “We thought: ‘What a cool thing to harness!’”

Playing with the idea

The first debate was just a few weeks off when Current hit on the idea of incorporating tweets into its broadcast. With no software engineer dedicated to the project, Sloan—who had done a bit of coding in the past—started playing with the Twitter API. (An API, or application programming interface, lets a company offer its data in ways that others can use and incorporate.)

“We didn't have a giant bundle of resources,” says Frank Lentz, Current’s senior vice president for creative affairs. “We were in scrappy, let's-make-a case-for-this mode. There was a lot of playing, tinkering, experimenting.”

To deal with the volume of messages, Sloan created an application with two levels of filtering. The first was a triage phase. About ten people searched Twitter for debate-related terms, and then quickly tagged any post that looked like it didn’t contain profanity, hate speech or material that would raise copyright issues.

The second phase was actively curatorial. Three or four people looked at the queued messages from the first filter and then decided which of those would be shown on air.

The final step, displaying the messages over the debate, proved a little tricky to figure out. In addition to integrating the Twitter data feed with the video feed, Current had to decide how the tweets would appear.

“We knew this idea had merit, but nobody has figured out the best way to display text commentary on TV,” says Lentz. “How do you do TV in the era of the Internet?”

Why it worked

After a lot of quick experiments, Current settled on the idea of having a stream of tweets roll up the screen and then dissolve about halfway up.

“We used Flash for the rendering, which just isn’t done on TV,” says Lentz. “But it turned out to have this quality that was really wonderful. There’s a jitteriness that lets you know the information is live.”

As excitement grew, more Current team members pitched in to help. With each debate, they improved the system a little more. “If you do something like this,” says Sloan, “expect you're going to have to iterate.”

Sloan says the ease of using the Twitter API was also critical to success. “It’s open, and it’s simple. That was key. That was empowering.”

A great experiment

Throughout the election season, Current received a lot of attention—far more than it would have had it stuck to a traditional broadcast.

The company also received a lot feedback on the project.

“Some people thought it was too aggressive, some thought it was just right,” says Lentz. “But everyone acknowledged that it was a great experiment and that in the world of a two-screened experience, we moved things forward.”