Word: channeling
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...told TIME last week, "but, you know, I like to make a good living, and I truly believe you can do well and do good at the same time." This week's launch of Current TV, his new 24-hour youth cable network, will test that proposition. The cable channel claims it will do nothing less than democratize television, giving anyone with a digital camera and a computer the kind of power that used to be enjoyed only by the mainstream media. Current TV will invite a young army of "citizen journalists" to submit edgy 15-second-to-15-minute...
...will they work? "We want to be the 'television home page' for the Internet generation," Gore has said. But there's no small amount of skepticism that his cable channel will be able to break out of the pack. If Gore is on to something with this idea of turning consumers into media programmers, so are a lot of other people. Korea's Ohmynews boasts a stable of 38,000 "citizen journalists." Pictures and video from bystanders' cell phones played a starring role in the mainstream media coverage of the terrorist bombings in London. There are already 70 million blogs...
Hyatt insists that Current will make its mark in a 500-channel cable universe as "the brand identified as the leader of citizen journalism," but the sample content featured on its website suggests it has a way to go. There is a gripping, sensitively shot video of Indian families cremating their loved ones on the Ganges but also one of a rapper who dresses as a jelly doughnut--which is funny for the first 40 seconds or so of its four minutes. A video account of the experiences of Current's executive director, Evan Stone, as a new parent (complete...
...delivering the news. They thought of creating a left-leaning political website or a liberal alternative to Fox News. Ultimately, Gore and Hyatt assembled 21 investors who put up a reported $70 million with which they last year bought Newsworld International (NWI), an international news channel, from Vivendi. The fact that nearly all of them are also big Democratic contributors (including Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy, MTV creator and former America Online exec Bob Pittman and Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein's financier husband Richard Blum) has raised questions about whether they are investing in Gore's business plan...
That's why it's no small irony that the biggest boon to the venture came from none other than media baron Rupert Murdoch, whose Fox News Channel Gore once called a "fifth column" that has turned "daily Republican talking points into the definition of what's objective." Chances are, Current TV would never have got even this far had Murdoch not given it NWI's existing slot on his DirecTV satellite system, which accounts for 14.5 million of the nearly 20 million households Current reaches. It's a big start toward the 50 million Gore hopes to attain...