www.current.tv

I'm an Al Gore fan. He was my congressman when I was growing up (4th district - TN). Then he was my Senator. I headed up UT Students for Gore in '88 and also campaigned for him in the debacle of 2000.

But I am sorry to say that I don't think this new venture is gonna fly.

The plan is that "young people" will submit video to Gore's new cable channel, but the thing is, even with the problems that come with still-limited bandwidth, these "young people" are already uploading their video directly to the Web. They are not going to be interested in adding the extra step of getting it to this TV channel (even if they can submit online) or even watching this TV channel. They can already watch and share video online without dealing with TV producers or programming schedules or signed releases, etc, etc

Maybe I'm wrong. I just don't think people are watching grassroots-produced video on TV anymore.

I am also disappointed to find out that the cable TV channel Gore is finally announcing (folks have known for more than a year that he was working with partners on launching some kind of cable channel) isn't going to be explicitly progressive in its views or programming. I was hoping he really was planning a progressive counterpoint to Fox News, but in today's press release about the new cable venture, Gore says quite clearly that his new channel will be basically apolitical - another recipe for disaster, in my opinion.