SF Weekly: Al Gore's S.F.-based Current TV is off to a rocky start

[Newsjock]

http://www.sfweekly.com/Issues/2006-02-08/news/news.html

Six months into Al Gore's experiment to turn twentysomethings into TV news junkies, the former vice president's San Francisco-based cable channel -- Current TV -- appears to have hit a snag.

Prospective viewers, even those who've heard of the youth-oriented news and information channel, are having a hard time finding it on cable systems, either because cable providers aren't carrying Current or because they've relegated it to more expensive -- and therefore less purchased -- cable packages.

... Although the channel bills itself as providing news and information for young people, by young people, others question Current's self-professed journalism.

"I don't see much news there," says Robert Thompson, who heads the Center for the Study of Popular Television at Syracuse University. "Not if you define news as the important events we need to know as part of a civil society."

Higgins, of Broadcasting & Cable magazine, takes a different view. "I admit to liking the programming. I think it's what you call a good grazing channel," he says, adding, "but then I've only seen it a couple of times. The cable company where I live doesn't carry it."

[papau]

1. It is an excellent "enough time to give context" news channel - the

Sat DirectTV folks have it buried with the talking heads of Fox cable news - but that seems reasonable as to location.

The Cable companies are screwing with Gore for political reasons - but that is something we can not do much about until we get media regulation back via a fairness regulation.

[Uncle Joe]

2. This is why we call them the corpwhorate owned MSM.

They have no social conscious just P.R. If the nation and the planet go to hell in a handbasket, they could care less.


"With power concentrated in the hands of a few cable giants, including Comcast and Time Warner, it's a tough sell for any channel not owned by a media conglomerate to break onto TV screens. But that may be especially true for Current, precisely because its chairman is Gore, observers say. As a U.S. senator, Gore helped push the Cable Act of 1992, which cost the industry many millions of dollars by restricting how cable operators charge consumers and earned him the scorn of some of the same executives whose favor he now needs to help jump-start his fledgling cable enterprise."

[phoebe]

3. and * just appointed another one of his cronies to the FCC with

ties to the 2000 recount no less..