MTV News: Unfiltered

MTV News: Unfiltered was an MTV television show created by Steven Rosenbaum[1] in 1993. In the series viewers sent story ideas to MTV News producers about controversial events in the viewers' community that were not being covered by traditional news outlets.[1] Al Gore was apparently a fan of its Dogme 95-style approach, which can be seen through his help in founding the Current TV network, which operates on the same premise.

The Series premiered in 1994 and ran for 4 years on MTV.

The series was shot on Hi-8 video tape, and was the first show at MTV edited on Avid. It ran for four years on MTV, produced by BNN. Old clips can be seen on the Internet on various websites. MTV would choose stories and provide video cameras and tapes for the viewers to record and submit stories. MTV then edited the footage and prepared it for broadcast. It contained four to six stories per show.

It was originally hosted by Alison Stewart, and later by Serena Altschul. Rob Barnett produced the original Pilot (then known as MTV Interact) and Rob Fox was the supervising producer of the Series. Steven Rosenbaum and Dave Sirulnick Co-Executive Produced the Series. Betsy Forhan, Robin Turner, Dave Goldberg, Mona Eldaief, Bruce Mcdonald and Dina Kaplan were all segment producers.

Writing about UNfiltered in FastCompany Magazine, Rob Walker wrote: "Every segment of 'MTV News UNfiltered' begins with a phone call. About 2,500 a week leave their story pitches on voice mail. Steven Rosenbaum and his BNN colleagues review them, identify the best bets, and send out camcorders to their newest correspondents. It's grassroots programming for a different kind of news program.

Which is not to suggest there's no filtering of "UNfiltered." Today Rosenbaum is reviewing the most recent pitches. There's an intriguing message from a kid who's been paralyzed by a gunshot. A message from a woman about multiracial dating sounds authentic, but too familiar. "Been there, done that," he says. A lot of the messages, truth be told, are from cranks and bores, and Rosenbaum quickly deletes them.

No matter. Somewhere in this queue is the next great "UNfiltered" segment. A while back, for example, BNN received a bunch of calls from heroin users — harrowing stories that could be told only by the people living them. Callers who make the cut send in their rough footage (up to seven hours worth for a four-minute segment). If the footage looks promising — and that can take several repeat shoots — a producer creates a rough cut and heads over to MTV for a screening." [2]

References

  1. 1 2 http://www.searchdictionaries.com/?q=unfiltered
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