Al Gore has announced that he is starting a new television network dubbed Current. And that lone sentence is more interesting than the network will ever be.
"We have no intention of being a Democratic channel, a liberal channel, or a TV version of Air America; that's not what we're all about" said Gore himself of the network. This sounds all nice and nuetral until one hears the list of Democratic All-Stars like Bob Pittman and Joel Hyatt of MTV who helped fund this project.
The basic plan is to pull us ADD-ridden young people away from the Pac-Man machines by showing short videos and packing in some real hard hitting content by posting Google.com's most popular searches as a result of an as yet to be released contract with the search engine. The whole thing smells of a nationally broadcast public access channel.
Which is actually the cool part. The network will allow viewer produced content to be submitted and broadcast, which does help make TV a medium for the working man. They are even going to throw in some sort of American Idol-esque online vote for viewers' favorite shows and segments. That part sounds cool, but the rest seems to conflict with the 15 minute Adult Swim cartoons and the meaningless statistics on Bloomberg television.
Still though, the possiblity of reaching the masses with my hysterical nonsense through the power of video amazes me.
Could video kill the Blog Star?
Bob, just make sure you email me & let me know when the Al Gore v. Bob Dole dance off is going to air on Gore-Vision! THAT is worth the price of admission right there baby! SHAKE IT LIKE A POLAROID PICTURE!
Posted by: Eddie Zyglis | April 05, 2005 at 08:44 PM
Bob Dole doesn't need that.
Posted by: Bob | April 05, 2005 at 09:03 PM
Perhaps he doesn't but I know that I do!
Posted by: Eddie Zyglis | April 05, 2005 at 11:32 PM
I want my GTV. I want promo spots on other networks telling me to chant this at my local cable company until they let me have it at a nominal fee.
I want my GTV to have a Bloomburg feel, with a window highlighting temperature for all bitchin' spring break locations (even though I, myself, while fitting in the demographic, do not have a spring break). I want another window to scroll the google searches as a live feed so I can see just when "free hot lesbian porn" is the most popular search. Another box should switch between top ten lists for this day and maybe fifteen years back so that I can wax nostalgic for the hits of my youth. The rest of the screen can show all of this happy news-bite crap, but maybe I need it to be animated.
I was, you know, raised on cartoons.
Yes! An animated news cast, perhaps brought to you by Strong Bad or some other Internet Cartoon, feeding me what is Teh Suck or what r0x0rs. And puppets. Dancing puppets who tell me what's going on with the war. Maybe GTV's producers will keep a messageboard not unlike Adult Swim and allow users to communicate with each other using bad grammar and signatures that must be at least sixteen lines long and include no less than five pieces of flair. Er.. I mean, animated smiley faces.
Don't people have anything better to do with their money?
Posted by: The Hza | April 06, 2005 at 12:40 AM