Pivot Pledges Progressive Calls to Action

Participant Media’s newest project isn’t invading a movie theater near you. It’s waiting for you on your cable TV box.

Pivot, a new channel debuting today, promises content that inspires young people, particularly those ages 15-34, to take a stand. Against what, pray tell? The media reports on the channel are coy here, but one need only look at Participant’s previous films to understand the goal.

An Inconvenient Truth

Promised Land

Syriana

Fair Game

Not all of Participant’s films feature a hard-left message. Waiting for ‘Superman’ offered a quasi-conservative critique of the modern school bureaucracy, but it’s the exception that proves the rule.

So what can we expect from Pivot? The channel’s early lineup includes documentaries, a Canadian reality series Little Mosque focusing on a Muslim family and reruns of Friday Night Lights. Meghan McCain is part of the channel’s initial lineup via Raising McCain, a “docu-talk” series featuring the oft-maligned commentator. The show might be the closest the channel gets to a conservative voice.

Here’s how the New York Daily News describes the new Pivot comedy Please Like Me: “In the first episode, Josh loses his girlfriend, discovers he might be gay and learns his mother has tried to commit suicide.”

The daily talk show TakePart Live features Huffington Post veterans Jacob Soboroff and Cara Santa Maria.

Liberal actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt is taking part in Pivot, producing material culled from his existing website’s content.

As some may know, HitRECord is Gordon-Levitt’s artists collective website, what he describes as “an open-collaborative production company.” The TV show is the realization of a dream for the actor who had been hoping to find a way to combine his work with HitRECord, his passion project, and his “more traditional” acting and entertainment endeavors.