Al Gore gets Current with Web 2.0

[RestoreGore]

http://money.cnn.com/2007/10/15/technology/current_tv.fortune/?postversion=2007101516

Al Gore gets Current with Web 2.0

The former vice president and a business partner were ahead of their time when they started a user-generated cable channel. Now they're looking to be pioneers on the Web.

By Adam Lashinsky, Fortune senior writer
October 15 2007: 4:47 PM EDT

(Fortune) -- Most folks thought the whole idea of "user-generated content" was kind of silly when Al Gore and his business partner Joel Hyatt started talking about it a few years ago.

Their plan was to create a television channel for young people that would encourage users to send in their own videos. Dumb idea, scoffed the TV experts. That, as they say, was then. Current TV, their creation, is a modest yet interesting success two years after its launch.

It's not YouTube, of course. But from an original cable grubstake of 17 million viewers that it acquired from a cable channel in Canada, Current is available in 41 million U.S. households and 52 million worldwide. Hyatt says Current was profitable in last year's fourth quarter on the strength of licensing fees it collects from cable and satellite networks as well its growing advertising business.

Its audience remains too tiny for Nielsen ratings. But Current claims to have the highest percentage of viewers in the coveted 18- to 34-year-old demographic of any television channel. (A high percentage of a low number is a low number, of course. Everyone's got to play to their strengths.)

Hyatt's executives noticed something else that was interesting in their research: 70 percent of their viewers claim to have an active laptop open, connected to the Internet, while watching the channel. The group took that insight and headed in the direction one might have expected it to from the very beginning: Online.

Inside Fox Business News

Today, the company is launching a redesigned Web site that has features that are as undeniably cool and youth-oriented as its hipster-geek television sibling. The site, Current.com, is transforming itself from essentially a how-to tool for landing videos on the television station into a full-on Web content site, a news-and-information counterpart to MySpace and Facebook.

snip

The Web site is immediately likeable. It's got a great programming "wheel" that shows users what's playing on the TV channel - and lets them watch videos too, in some instances before the content has appeared on the airwaves.

snip

There's also something earnest about Current.com and its TV companion. It's on-air hosts and online editors are cool and say "dude" from time to time. But they're unabashedly interested in what's going on in Mogadishu and Chechnya.

A powerful feature lets users upload Web-cam recorded comments of no longer than 60 seconds. (Think of the legions of oddballs holed up in their apartments writing letters to the editors of the New York Times; Current.com allows its Web-savvy users to broadcast comments to each other.)

Serious journalists, and anyone concerned about civic life, ought to root for Current.com. If anyone's got a chance at getting young people interested in complex topics, this it.

"We like to say we're building the television home page for the Internet generation," says Earl. Now they're building the Internet home page for the television home page too.
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Mr. Gore uploaded three videos yesterday on http://www.current.com regarding his views on healthcare, Iraq, and privacy. Views he has shared before but not in an environment where young people can talk one on one about them. This is what makes this type of technology go beyond the MSM: because it is a two way dialogue. Of course, many who are responding on these videos are not discussing the issues but once again only using them as an excuse to beg him ro run for president in this toxic system. It would then seem that people really don't want two way dialogue with their fellow Americans... they just want him to give them all the answers.

I honestly do believe he posted these videos to get the conversation going. Too bad all it is getting is the same old thing from many of the respondants that the MSM gives us. That was why he did not allow questions Friday after making his statement regarding receiving the Nobel Peace Prize, because I believe he specifically did not want to hear "that" question again. He wants people to start talking about issues in a reasonable way and come together to give ideas and solutions. Again then, it's too bad the usual "blogs" got wind of his videos and only turned it into another political rally as if the man can't have a view on anything unless he is running for something, which is ridiculous. However, it does prove once again how right his book The Assault On Reason really is, and how peoples' thought processes really work.

Rather then seeing him as a statesman looking to start a dialogue and influence events, they see him as a calculating "politician" deliberately using his tv station and his books and his movie and his awards to run a stealth political campaign while lying to us all regarding his intentions. I'm really beginning to wonder about people who continue to insinuate that. There is so much more to his work than that.

[HeeBGBz]

1. I'm having problems getting in Current

I tried to register, but it slowed to a crawl and I couldn't complete. Now I can't get there at all. It looked awesome.

[RestoreGore]

2. Lots of traffic I suppose

And yes, it is terrific. I got an invite to post and check it out before the launch. I hope the overall idea behind this concept is not also lost in all the speculative folly.

[madrchsod]

3. current tv is great..it really is the future of television.

i watch current on the net but i like the tv version much better. what`s cool about the dish network is they put current and the documentary channel just a few numbers below the cable news stations.

[RestoreGore]

4. I wish I could get the TV version on my cable

I requested it, but so far nothing. Perhaps with the influx of all these new members so suddenly who truly care about the mission of this station, we will see it expand. :think:

[RestoreGore]

5. I have to state regarding Mr. Gore's comments and the responses...

That the overall impression there and here and I am sure other blogs that only shake pom poms seems to be that he isn't worthy of having an opinion unless he is running for something even after winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I actually find that a bit insulting to him. Isn't this what a statesman seeking to move the discourse and enjoin us in the process does? Shame if he was looking forward to reading responses that actually had ideas and comments on topic on the threads he created. I tried. I could just imagine if he had given them their "Sherman" statement. Hardly anyone would even care about CURRENT here. Many didn't before yesterday. The pattern is then obvious.