Al Gore Invented YouTube

July 28, 2006

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It’s a bad joke just waiting to be uttered, but the ex-president-elect did invent Current TV, a viewer-created channel.

You just may not be paying attention because not many people watch it.

But, now that stuff like YouTube and Bravotv.com’s “video mash-ups” (and other sundry examples) are the hottest thing on the 'net, Current TV is getting attention.

“Obviously they didn't get what we were doing,” says Joel Hyatt, CEO and co-founder of San Francisco-based Current TV. “Now, just shy of our first anniversary, the entire industry is copying us -- how we are engaging our audience to contribute to the content they consume. Those executives that scoffed at us are now saying to their teams: Go figure out how to do what Current is doing.”

Indeed, in the year since the 24-hour network premiered on Aug. 1, 2005, Current TV is seeing its model readily duplicated by such major cable players as MTV and VH1, and, soon, the newly formed CW broadcast network.

Although Current is by no means the creator of the viewer-contributed genre, the channel has done much to integrate and showcase such content into both its on-air and online programming.

“We really set out to be at the cutting edge,” says Hyatt, “to be at the intersection of television and the Internet, bringing what we felt was badly needed innovation to television and doing so by borrowing much of what one could learn from the experience of the Internet. We want to be the television home page of the Internet generation.”
At the moment, Current still appears to be more of a zap-by-it channel than appointment television. And its newfangled idea of quick-hit pod programs might have to be incorporated with old-school 30-minute and hour-long series.

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