31 Jul 05 Al Gore’s cable channel aims for young viewers
A new cable channel headed by former Vice President Al Gore hopes to draw twentysomethings looking for news, information and features produced by young adults for young adults.
Current TV, of which Gore is chairman, will launch Aug. 1 in 20 million cable and satellite households nationwide in place of 24-hour news channel Newsworld International. [continue]
Younger viewers meaning 18-34 year olds.
I have watched News World International on DirecTV and was a pretty decent news channel. Broadcasted out of Canada by CBC, it did carry stories not otherwise covered by the three other news cable stations, and I am sad to see it go.
‘Current’ is the name of the new channel that News World International is becoming. Al Gore bought NWI to make his brainchild a reality.
A description of the new channel.
Current is the first national network created by, for and with an 18-34 year-old audience, offering 24 hours of independent programming. The new TV network adopts what has made the Internet the medium of choice for young adultsâ€â€customizable content and consumer participation. It offers unique short-format content created in the voice of its viewers and uniquely tailored to their interests: everything from technology, fashion, music and videogames, to the environment, relationships, spirituality, politics, finance, and parenting… subjects that young adults can rarely find on TV. Current also enlists its viewers to become creative partners, providing an open forum to submit viewer-produced content, making it the first television network whose programming is supplied in part by the very audience who watches it.
Sounds interesting, but one does have to wonder how politically slanted the channel will be, given a former politician is running the show.
Current is supposed to start broadcasting August 1st, so we will see.
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Hopefully, it will be very politically slanted. I’ve love to have a liberal channel.
You might want to checkout LinkTV, it is a couple channels up from Current. They run some liberal shows.
On a side note, I was flipping thru the channels and ended up on Current a minute before the cutover. I watched the first five minutes. They seem to have issues after the first minute, ended up freezing on something from A&E, then to a DirecTV technical difficulties screen.
Guess, I will check it out tomorrow.