Gore Launches TV Channel for Young Viewers
"... Al Gore has a plan for luring the Internet generation back to television: make it more participatory by having viewers contribute their own video.
The former vice president and longtime Internet champion joined investors Monday to announce the creation of Current, a cable TV channel that will target younger viewers with a blend of news, culture and viewer-produced video.
Gore will serve as chairman of the board of the new venture, which will be based in San Francisco. "
"...He and Joel Hyatt, the founder of Hyatt Legal Services who will serve as Current's chief executive, assembled an investment team that paid $70 million last year to acquire the Newsworld International channel from Vivendi International.
The channel, to launch Aug. 1, will remain privately financed and initially will be available in 19 million cable-subscriber homes...
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"...The channel will try to engage viewers ages 18 to 34 using the Web's signature blend of interactivity and populism, Gore and Hyatt explained.
Gore, dressed in a charcoal gray suit and no tie, stood on stage with Current's creative team -- a multicultural group of TV producers the same age as his children.
He said the venture was dedicated to giving young people a voice.
"We're about empowering this generation ... to engage in the dialogue of democracy and tell the story of what's going on in their lives in the dominant media of our time," said the 57-year-old Gore.
Central to their strategy is inviting Current's viewers to supply their own video content and helping them produce it using editing tools that Current will make available on its Web site.
That video eventually will comprise more than half the programming seen on the channel.
Yet he insisted that Current will have no political agenda.
"We have no intention of being a Democratic channel, a liberal channel or the TV version of Air America," Gore said, referring to the fledgling liberal radio network. "It is not in any way an ideological, much less partisan point of view in any respect. It will have the point of view of the young generation."
In its first contest judging video submissions to the channel, Current awarded a $15,000 prize to three filmmakers who produced a funny segment poking fun at predictable and often misleading presidential campaign ads..."
