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Pivot will cull its programming for appropriate calls to action to air during the shows. During August alone, more than 160 action proposals will be highlighted on screen for viewers to consider, Shapiro said. "But we also wanted an issue that was universal, across the entire network," he added
-- "a campaign that, whoever you are, applies to you." What Pivot came up with: digital and media literacy. It resulted in a year-round initiative called Eyes Wide Open. Underlying the campaign is Pivot's own polling of 18-to34-year-olds, which found a generation worried about bias in their news and often feeling misled by social media, even as many of them acknowledged having misled others with their posts. Meanwhile, this crowd voiced confusion, even a sense of defeat, about the problem of online privacy. "This is the first digitally native generation in the history of the world," said Shapiro, "and they feel overwhelmed. They feel trapped. We want to give them a resource to talk about that, to know they're not alone in it and to get more information and help." He calls "TakePart Live" the face of this initiative, and of Pivot overall, "because we want to help decode the information that is being thrust at this audience on an ongoing basis." But there's more. On its website Pivot will launch its digital and media literacy hub containing information on a user's rights in the digital world, advice on establishing privacy settings, and, in a bid by the network for corporate transparency, its own policy on advertising
-- what it accepts and rejects and why.
Pivot will present an original half-hour documentary, "Eyes Wide Open," premiering Sept. 11. The campaign will be the focus of the first episode of "Raising McCain," while those issues will be examined in at least a half-dozen editions of ABC News' "Nightline" produced in the coming year in partnership with Pivot. "We think the stories we tell and how we tell them are uniquely suited to the mission at Participant and at Pivot," said "Nightline" executive producer Jeanmarie Condon, "as we work together to write the next chapter in the history of these two powerful brands." That next chapter, said Shapiro, calls for the audience to get more savvy about producing and consuming media content. "We want to create the most literate audience in digital media on Earth," he said. ___ Online:
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That's the word from Pivot, a new cable television network targeting 15-to-34-year-olds. It signs on next week.
