Power to the People: A Guest Post by Joel Hyatt

Joel Hyatt is the CEO of Current TV, a 24-hour cable and satellite channel that he co-founded with Vice President Al Gore.

The format of the presidential debates hasn't changed much since the invention of TV, and it shows. They're one-way, top-down, cautious and over-produced. And we've seen in recent elections that they don't serve us as a society; the major networks' treatment of the debates is more often a distortion and a distraction than a boon to democracy.

But when Barack Obama and John McCain step on stage at the University of Mississippi, the web will light up with real-time commentary. Friends will IM each other; bloggers will post live. Facebook status messages will change to reflect what's happening in the debate. And real-time micro-blogging platforms, like Twitter, will surge with reaction and analysis.

This is how big, public events are shared now. Don't think of millions of Americans sitting silently in their living rooms, dutifully watching the networks' one-way feed; think of millions of Americans leaning into their laptops, connected to each other, reacting and processing the
debate in real-time.

We know the majority of Current's audience watches TV with a laptop open, and they're looking for an experience that bridges both of those screens. They're looking for a social, plugged-in experience that connects them to their friends and to their peers.

So while the candidates are debating, there is another debate happening in the background -- by real people and in real time. At Current, we want to bring that debate -- or better said, that conversation -- into the foreground. And, frankly, we believe that conversation will be better than the horrible diatribes of pundits, blinded by their partisanship.

We're not aiming, or claiming, to represent the entire public; this isn't a poll. Instead, we're plugging into one of the most popular platforms for real-time commentary in the world: Twitter. We're cognizant of its biases. But those are biases shared, in large part, by our young, plugged-in audience. They're the ones we want to represent on TV, because we think they're a special generation: uniquely smart, savvy, and engaged.

Will it work? We don't know. We think it's an exciting experiment, and we will, of course, enhance the experience over the course of the four debates, using lessons from each to improve the next.

Overall, though, I think what's more important than Current's specific approach is our belief that the debates need reinventing. They haven't changed in forty years; everything else around them has.

So one of the reasons we'll be layering tweets directly over the broadcast is to make a statement: Interactivity isn't an afterthought. The audience's voice matters. The presidential debates -- and politics in general -- should go two ways. We must allow the voice of the public to be heard.

But I'd pose this question to the Presidential Debate Blog's readership: How would you reinvent the debates? This blog has focused on the tactics and strategy around the debates as they've been set up. But what if you could design a new structure entirely? What might presidential debates built for the internet generation look like?