Atelier des Médias: Karl Zero, from computer illiterate to Web video star

Running notes from the Ateliers des Médias (The Media Workshop), a half-day gathering of media and advertising people that takes place annually in the scope of the Geneva Book Fair. Closing session. (Previous sessions here)

Karl Zero is a French media star. He used to host a comedy news program (similar to Jon Stewart's Daily Show) every Sunday on the French channel CanalPlus. He was pushed out mid-2006 (just at the beginning of the current presidential campaign...) and he moved on to start a successful web-based TV show, JT2Zero, which gets between 150'000 and 250'000 viewers every evening. In the meantime, he has produced a movie ("Dans la peau de Jacques Chirac") that won a César (the French Oscar), following which apparently relations with CanalPlus are again on the sunny side. More recently, he also produced a controversial documentary, Michael Moore-style, about the two leading candidates for French President, Nicolas Sarkozy and Segolène Royal (watch a portion of the video). And he is now working on one on George Bush.
"I found a new energy through the Web. I believe that over time newscasts on TV will disappear anyway, the idea that you watch a newscast at a given time is gone", says Zero. He acknowledges however that one year ago he didn't use computers; now he goes around with his Mac laptop, turns on the built-in webcam, and shoots his newscast (he did so this morning on the Geneva lake side, the video will be online on his site tonight), or does it with a video-enabled cell phone. "People want more genuine, real stuff: they're tired of the planned, licked, over-polished, fake television. He understands himself as a "media resistant": "the media in France are under pressure. People are afraid, and they aren't wrong: whoever is elected president this Sunday, there will be some bit of MacCarthism in newsrooms". "The Web is a new space of freedom; there are some new people that do promising things and I'm working on trying to federate them to do politically-uncorrect journalism online". Asked for whom he will cast his vote on Sunday, he says he doesn't know yet.