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| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Trouble at Al Gore's CURRENT TV |
| 2010-06-25 |
| For much of the past year, Current TV has been quietly undergoing an overhaul that will change just about everything but the struggling channel's name. Current declined comment for this story. It's a revitalization project Gore & Co. embarked on after exhausting a more lucrative possibility: selling the channel. Current's founding partner, Joel Hyatt, spent much of 2009 shopping the network with a price tag that wildly overestimated the company's worth, confirmed sources at several media firms. Current even had extensive sale talks as far back as 2007 with Google, where Gore serves as a senior advisor. Now the focus has shifted to fixing Current, perhaps with an eye toward a sale down the road. Remainder of article notes that Youtube does a lot of what Current says it does and that Youtube has an enormous audience while the viewership of CURRENT TV is unknown. |
| Posted by:lord garth |
| #13 ..shopping the network with a price tag that wildly overestimated the company's worth, rofl |
| Posted by: Mike Hunt 2010-06-25 19:41 |
| #12 The web has tons of interesting content, but almost none of it makes money. The issue with Current TV and Google is that Gore was monetizing his political reputation through a non-arms length financial transaction. This is the essnece of crony capitalism. Shades of Berlusconi in Italy or Slim and the Mexican political class or Putin-Abramovich et al in Russia. |
| Posted by: lex 2010-06-25 17:27 |
| #11 How does its numbers compare with PJTV, which I think is sort of its competition, isn't it? |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2010-06-25 16:27 |
| #10 "Current actually has some pretty interesting documentaries on every once in awhile." Chris, where in the hell do you get it? Do you have to pay for it? (And why would you?) |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2010-06-25 16:00 |
| #9 ummm 3dc I'm old enough too think for myself , Current doesn't just do politically mpotivated stories. They go different places in the world and show kind of like a National Geographic stuff . Like recently I watched a docu about Madagascar on there and it was pretty ointeresting. Sometimes we all need a break from just bitching about what goes on in politics and the wars. |
| Posted by: chris 2010-06-25 15:35 |
| #8 Beached Sea Manatee would have been my first guess. grasping the meteorological dynamics governing the globe I don't understand, is that betadork for tush? |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2010-06-25 14:39 |
| #7 chris - the communist LinkTV is a million times more interesting and honest than Current TV... |
| Posted by: 3dc 2010-06-25 14:05 |
| #6 even though it is owned by Gore Current actually has some pretty interesting documentaries on every once in awhile. |
| Posted by: chris 2010-06-25 13:58 |
| #5 I was thinking that the "rotund" massage client in his hotel robe must have looked more like a "crazed sex polar bear". No doubt depraved on accounta he's deprived of ice floes due to AGW. |
| Posted by: lex 2010-06-25 13:27 |
| #4 For all the brilliance he has displayed grasping the meteorological dynamics governing the globe Well that's one way of describing what a “crazed sex poodle” gets up to. |
| Posted by: tipper 2010-06-25 13:23 |
| #3 I presume PC stands for polecat, lex. (For our foreign readers, polecat = skunk.) |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2010-06-25 13:20 |
| #2 correction: Gore's a PC version of a Russian oligarch. |
| Posted by: lex 2010-06-25 13:15 |
| #1 Note the "sale talks with Google" angle. This is crony capitalism in action: Google seeks favorable regulatory treatment Google hires ex-VP Al Gore to sit on its board, showers him with stock options Gore latches on to BS internet startup Gore's BS internet startup flounders Google buys Gore's BS internet startup [attempted, not consummated]. All of these transpired, save for the last step in the crony capitalist circlejerk-- or in Gore's case, maybe we should say, handjob. Meanwhile, Gore's BS electric car startup gets a $531 million sweetheart loan from Obama's Dept of Energy. Gore isn't a democratic politician; he's a OC version of a Russian oligarch. |
| Posted by: lex 2010-06-25 13:15 |