This article is about how CBS is now attempting to incorporate user generated content as a means to attract fans to its website.  For the upcoming NCAA Basketball Tournament, also known as March Madness, CBS is inviting fans to produce videos that support their favorite team and/or denigrate other “rival” teams.  The article then goes on to list other companies that are incorporating this type of user generated content, citing the Dorito’s Super-Bowl commercials that were created by consumers and the Unilever ad that ran during the Academy Awards and was also created by consumers.  Also, the article mentions Anheuser-Busch and their efforts to create a promotional program that will allow consumers to create their own commercials which can then be posted on their website.  Finally, the article concludes with a description of CBS-created “sample commercials” that are supposed to serve as a model to March Madness fans who want to create their own videos.  CBS is hoping to attract and instruct consumers through these sample ads, and the article concludes by mentioning how this will attract more online advertisers for this year’s basketball tournament.
    While this appears to be a fairly innocuous article about the future of user generated content and the marketing that companies are putting into attracting consumers to create their own video content, there are many insidious implications in this piece.  For one, the article mentions how YouTube will soon be providing “branded channels,” which are essentially user generated video channels that are intended to attract consumers by allowing them to create advertisements for a certain company.  Companies see this interactive opportunity as a great way to raise “brand loyalty.”  Also, the article mentions the six “sample commercials” that CBS created, which are intended to “be as close to authentic” as possible.  Authenticity, then, simply becomes something that can be created and produced by companies like CBS.  Finally, the article mentions how CBS will be screening every video submitted “for language and appropriateness of content.”  The article assures the reader, though, that CBS will “preserve their [the videos] reality and spontaneity.”  There are many troubling things about this form of tacit (sort of) censorship, one being that CBS is now the arbiter of what is and is not “appropriate.”  Also, the notion that “reality and spontaneity” need to be screened for is blatantly contradictory, but ultimately very telling about this so-called democratizing force known as user generated content.  Read this article with skepticism and ire (i.e. critically), though, and it can be very illuminating.  For this reason I think it can be useful for my project that deals with exactly what this article addresses (although approaches it from a much different perspective).