HitRECord: Will it Work?

Tomorrow night (January 18th) we will see the premiere of the long talked about HitRECord, a project by Joseph Gordon-Levitt that is finally moving from the Internet to television.  But will it work?  The easy part to like is the lovable Mr. Gordon-Levitt.  His energy and optimism is infective.  However, one might still ask if television is the appropriate medium since he has gone from a venue of creators to couch potatoes.  

 First, this new show comes from a "collaborative process," defined as:

Writers, musicians, illustrators, photographers, video editors — artists of all kinds are invited to contribute their work to hitRECord. Once on the site, the hitRECord community collaboratively edits, builds upon, develops and remixes each others work to create songs, animation, short films, live shows, music videos — you name it! 

I watched the first episode via YouTube and found the charm was of limited duration.  The theme of "Number 1" reminded me more of Sesame Street than a variety show.  And the production pieces themselves were interesting but not all that impressive.  My favorite was probably the song at the end.  Maybe this is the difference between watching television news and reading the newspaper; in the first case you are stuck with the stream whereas in the second case you can drift to the topics of interest. 

HitRECord has other venues, from book to videos to music, so maybe I just need to find the right approach.  I do wish Mr. Gordon-Levitt well on this venture and I expect he will find an audience on the relatively new Pivot TV.