Al Gore's TV Network to Make Debut Monday

[gldstwmn]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050731/...NlYwMlJVRPUCUl

NEW YORK - Much of the talk around Al Gore's new Current TV network has been broadly philosophical, like the former vice president's statement that "we want to be the television home page for the Internet generation." With its debut Monday, Current TV will be judged by the same mundane standards as other networks — on whether its programming can hold a viewer's interest.

Gore and his fellow investors envision Current as a sounding board for young people, a step beyond traditional notions of interactivity. They want viewers to contribute much of the network's content now that quality video equipment is widely available.

Based on material previewed on its Web site, Current at first glance seems like a hipper, more irreverent version of traditional television newsmagazines.

Most of its programming will be in "pods," roughly two to seven minutes long, covering topics like jobs, technology, spirituality and current events. An Internet-like on-screen progress bar will show the pod's length.

Its short films include a profile of a hang glider and a piece on working in a fish market. One contributor talked about what it was like to have his phone number on a hacked Internet list of Paris Hilton's cell phone contacts, saying that dealing with curiosity seekers was like "hosting your own radio call-in show."

Every half-hour, Current promises a news update using data from Google on news stories most frequently searched for on the Web.

"We have no illusions about the fact that our product has to be compelling," said David Neuman, Current's programming director. "We also believe it has to be unique. Who wants to watch the seventh clone of a different network?"

Despite suspicions created by his former profession, Gore promises the network won't be advancing a political point of view.

"I think the reality of the network will speak for itself," he told reporters in Los Angeles two weeks ago. "It's not intended to be partisan in any way and not intended to be ideological."

Gore's name may help attract the curious, at least initially.

"People may not have heard of Current TV, but they will have heard that Al Gore has a television station," said J.D. Lasica, co-founder of Ourmedia.org and an expert on digital media.

Gore's team bought the former Newsworld International channel to ensure it has at least some initial distribution. About 20 million homes (out of about 110 million nationally) will get Current TV right away. Success depends on more than doubling that within a couple of years, said analyst Mark Mackenzie of Sanford Bernstein.

To do that, Current must successfully straddle the rapidly changing worlds of television and the Web.

"Current TV is important not for what it is today as for what it heralds tomorrow," Lasica said. "What is important about Current TV is that it's opening up the world a crack to Internet television becoming mainstream."

Current's relationships with cutting-edge content providers haven't been completely smooth.

The initial enthusiasm that Josh Wolf, a 23-year-old filmmaker from San Francisco, felt for Current has cooled. Last year Current said it was going to hire 200 video journalists and give them low-cost equipment. Some 2,000 people applied, but Current abandoned the plan, causing some bad blood, he said.

Neuman said Gore decided the approach wasn't democratic enough; if he truly wanted to open Current up to everyone, it didn't make sense to create an elite 200.

Current is also requiring its filmmakers to sign an agreement giving the network three months' exclusive use of material it has accepted for air. Leaders of the rapidly growing video blogging community have resisted, Wolf said. Those filmmakers most likely to fill Current's stable of independent contributors don't want to be told they can't use their best material on their own Web sites.

The network, which had initially sought six months' exclusivity but softened after the complaints surfaced, is trying to balance satisfying these potential contributors while being able to give viewers something they can't see anywhere else, Neuman said.

"We can't apologize for doing what we need to do to get this business off the ground," he said.

Only about 25 percent of Current's initial material is truly audience-generated; the rest has been done by staff members or solicited from professionals. That's disappointingly small to some people who bought into Current's utopian visions; Neuman said he expects more amateur contributions once the network is established.

Wolf remains interested in what Current is doing. It won't be his television home page, however — just one button he programs on his remote.

"I have this sense that Current is not really looking for content that does not go in line with what their advertisers and investors are interested in seeing," he said. "It's still television that you can zone off to."

Because America Online's widely praised coverage of the Live 8 concerts less than a month ago proved a landmark in the acceptance of Internet television, Current runs one risk it could not have anticipated: potentially becoming obsolete just as it's starting. Unlike television, the Internet allows consumers to hunt specifically for material it wants to see, and skip through it at their leisure, Mackenzie said.

But Lasica said lying on a couch still beats sitting at a desktop.

"Most people still want to watch television in the living room or the family room," he said, "and that's where Current TV has an advantage over any of the Internet startups."

Years of planning, of anticipating what its target audience wants, is now about to be tested on millions of screens. Current is set up to reflect how its operators believe young viewers experience TV, in short bursts with an eye always on what's next.

"We're not relying on what we think is cool or interesting or happening," Neuman said. "We're holding up a mirror to our audience. That, to me, is our insurance policy."

[xxxmx]

if i had a tv, i'd be a lot more excited about this. i really like how they made a point of saying that all news networks are basically the same, which they are but with slightly different slants. al gave us the internet, now he will give us internet-ish tv... great!

[SteveMacD]

While I'm definately a liberal, I'm now pissed at Al Gore. Because of this, Newsworld International will cease to be, and that was the ONLY way to get CBC news on television in most of the USA THAT's how I was keeping informed. The least slanted news, I found, was the news made by the folks who didn't have an active interest in what was happening in the USA.

[dissention]

I'm a bit excited to see this tomorrow, it should be quite interesting and quite weird. I tried reading the FAQ on the website to get a better understanding of it and the programming, but it's pretty laborious to read.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by dissention

I'm a bit excited to see this tomorrow, it should be quite interesting and quite weird. I tried reading the FAQ on the website to get a better understanding of it and the programming, but it's pretty laborious to read.

Bless his heart. He must have written it himself.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by gldstwmn

Bless his heart. He must have written it himself.

There's a question asking about what kind of network it will be and then the question right after it asks to clarify the explanation just given to the previous question.

[sparky]

I can't imagine this. But then again, my cable was turned off over three months ago - I can hardly imagine TV at all. CNN was on a big flat screen tv at work the other day and I had to listen to this non stop barrage about terrorists and storms. After about 20 minutes I wanted to run out of the building and dive off the edge of the balcony onto the sharp rocks below. I stopped watching the news after 9/11 anyway. I can't take it. As long as the few shows I used to watch issue the entire seasons on DVD, I may never have to watch actual television again. Ironic. What I do for a living, I can't stand to look at. It took not watching it at all to make me realize I hate it.

Al Gore ? Please. The national loser. That guy is an idiot. I am still annoyed with him.

[sodascouts]

Originally Posted by xxxmx

al gave us the internet

He'll never live that BS claim down.

[dissention]

Originally Posted by sodascouts

He'll never live that BS claim down.

Bull**** claim?

He never claimed that he created the Internet, he said that while he was in Congress, he fought for the funding that initiated the creation of it. And he did do that. Arpanet, anyone? The fact that the press took his statement so literally, printing that he said he "invented" it when he said no such thing, is another example of how skewed that joke of an election was.

[gldstwmn]

Originally Posted by sparky

I
Al Gore ? Please. The national loser. That guy is an idiot. I am still annoyed with him.

For what? He fought until the Supreme Court ruled against him. What was he supposed to do? He is the rightful president of the United States. Beyotches.

[gldstwmn]

http://www.snopes.com/quotes/internet.asp

Internet of Lies


Claim: Vice-President Al Gore claimed that he "invented" the Internet.

Status: False.

Origins: Despite the derisive references that continue even today, Al Gore did not claim he "invented" the Internet, nor did he say anything that could reasonably be interpreted that way. The "Al Gore said he 'invented' the Internet" put-downs were misleading, out-of-context distortions of something he said during an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN's "Late Edition" program on 9 March 1999. When asked to describe what distinguished him from his challenger for the Democratic presidential nomination, Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey, Gore replied (in part):
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
Clearly, although Gore's phrasing was clumsy (and perhaps self-serving), he was not claiming that he "invented" the Internet (in the sense of having designed or implemented it), but that he was responsible, in an economic and legislative sense, for fostering the development the technology that we now know as the Internet. To claim that Gore was seriously trying to take credit for the "invention" of the Internet is, frankly, just silly political posturing that arose out of a close presidential campaign. Gore never used the word "invent," and the words "create" and "invent" have distinctly different meanings — the former is used in the sense of "to bring about" or "to bring into existence" while the latter is generally used to signify the first instance of someone's thinking up or implementing an idea. (To those who say the words "create" and "invent" mean exactly the same thing, we have to ask why, then, the media overwhelmingly and consistently cited Gore as having claimed he "invented" the Internet, even though he never used that word, and transcripts of what he actually said were readily available.)

If President Eisenhower had said in the mid-1960s that he, while President, "created" the Interstate Highway System, we would not have seen dozens and dozens of editorials lampooning him for claiming he "invented" the concept of highways or implying that he personally went out and dug ditches across the country to help build the roadway. Everyone would have understood that Ike meant he was a driving force behind the legislation that created the highway system, and this was the very same concept Al Gore was expressing about himself with his Internet statement.

Whether Gore's statement that he "took the initiative in creating the Internet" is justified is a subject of debate. Any statement about the "creation" or "beginning" of the Internet is difficult to evaluate, because the Internet is not a homogenous entity (it's a collection of computers, networks, protocols, standards, and application programs), nor did it all spring into being at once (the components that comprise the Internet were developed in various places at different times and are continuously being modified, improved, and expanded). Despite a spirited defense of Gore's claim by Vint Cerf (often referred to as the "father of the Internet") in which he stated "that as a Senator and now as Vice President, Gore has made it a point to be as well-informed as possible on technology and issues that surround it," many of the components of today's Internet came into being well before Gore's first term in Congress began in 1977.

It is true, though, that Gore was popularizing the term "information superhighway" in the early 1990s (although he did not, as is often claimed by others, coin the phrase himself) when few people outside academia or the computer/defense industries had heard of the Internet, and he sponsored the 1988 National High-Performance Computer Act (which established a national computing plan and helped link universities and libraries via a shared network) and cosponsored the Information Infrastructure and Technology Act of 1992 (which opened the Internet to commercial traffic).

In May 2005, the organizers of the Webby Awards for online achievements honored Al Gore with a lifetime achievement award for three decades of contributions to the Internet. "He is indeed due some thanks and consideration for his early contributions," said Vint Cerf.

Last updated: 5 May 2005