Gore unveils new venture to make TV interactive
SAN FRANCISCO -- Al Gore has a plan for luring the Internet generation back to television: make it more participatory by having viewers contribute their videos.
The former vice president, presidential candidate, and longtime champion of the Internet joined investors yesterday to announce the creation of Current, a cable TV channel that will target younger viewers with a blend of news, culture, and videos from viewers.
Gore will be chairman of the venture, to 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 be launched on Aug. 1, will remain privately financed and initially will be available in 19 million cable-subscriber homes.
The channel will try to engage viewers ages 18 to 34 using the Web's blend of interactivity and populism, Gore and Hyatt said.
Gore 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 Gore, 57.
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 website.
The channel also has established a partnership with the Google search engine, which will provide twice-an-hour updates on viewers' top Internet searches.
Gore said his interest in the venture stemmed from a frustration that television, because of the high cost of cameras, studios, and production, had long been a ''one-way" medium dominated by large media companies.
''The $100,000 television camera has become a $3,000 high-definition camera, and the $250,000 editing console has become a $1,000 Apple computer program," Gore said. ''The five-person crew can be one young woman in her twenties with something the size of a handbag."
10-year 'JAG' run will end, CBS says
''JAG," the CBS drama about military lawyers, will end its run this April after 10 years on the air, the network said yesterday.
CBS said the final episode will air April 29, and will resolve the long-running romantic tension between the show's leading characters, played by David James Elliott and Catherine Bell.
The show aired for one season on NBC and was then picked up by CBS, starting in January 1997. REUTERS
