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Former Vice President Pitches Youth-Oriented Network to Comcast

Posted on: Thursday, 20 October 2005, 21:00 CDT

By Tony Gnoffo, The Philadelphia Inquirer

Oct. 21--Comcast Corp. chairman Brian L. Roberts is known to be a shrewd and artful negotiator, but a novice network executive threw him quite a curveball last night.

The pitch came from former vice president Al Gore, who now is chairman of a youth-oriented television network called Current TV. Gore wants Comcast to carry Current on all of its cable systems, but the two parties have yet to strike a deal.

So Gore and his partner, legal entrepreneur Joel Hyatt, who now serves as the network's chief executive, invited 7,000 Current TV fans to Dilworth Plaza in front of City Hall last night for a "Take Back TV" rally.

Knowing it would take more than Gore's oratory to draw such a crowd, the Current TV team also invited several bands, including Philadelphia's Roots.

It all took place under Roberts' nose -- way under his nose. His office on the 35th floor of 1500 Market St. was well within view of the crowd in the plaza.

Whether the rally has the desired effect of moving Comcast closer to a deal to continue to carry Current TV on one of its hundreds of digital channels remains to be seen.

Because Current took over a network that Comcast was already carrying, the cable company offers Current on about half of its systems. Gore wants to convince Comcast to continue carrying the network, and to expand it to more systems. Comcast's Philadelphia area systems do not carry the network.

Gore said last night that the talks with Comcast so far have been "quite pleasant."

Current TV aims at an audience between 18 and 34 with a menu of viewer-produced programs that have the look and feel video "podcasts." Viewers can show their own productions on the network, if their work gets a "green light" from registered visitors to the network's Web site, www.current.tv.

Hyatt said the network pays between $200 and $1,000 to the videographers whose work is selected. The best of them, he said, are contracted by the network to produce additional programs.

Among the videos seeking the green light last night were a commentary on steroid use in Major League Baseball, interviews with young people in North Carolina about their views on gay marriage, and an introduction to "spiritual development thru taiji."

The network, said Gore, "is the only place on American TV where young people in their 20s can take part in the national conversation that takes place on TV."

In addition to the Comcast systems, Current is also carried by satellite distributor DirecTV and on some Time Warner Cable systems.

Gore called for a "national debate" on the state of American TV. The corporations that control TV, he said, are not always interested in putting on programs "that are in the best interest of the American people."

Comcast alone controls what one in five American households can watch on TV. Critics say that control gives it the ability to virtually veto any new cable network -- and that it tends to favor networks it controls or that are controlled by other big media companies.

Comcast officials, however, say ownership has nothing to do with their network selections. Rather, they say, their decisions are based on what they believe their subscribers want to see.

"Current is available on Comcast systems reaching 13 million homes today," Comcast said in a written statement, "and we are in discussions with the new channel about their plans to further develop its content and about their interest in additional distribution in Comcast markets. Current is one of dozens of channels vying for scarce bandwidth and viewership."

But Gore and Hyatt said last night that Comcast and other cable operators are not doing a good job of picking networks that viewers want to see.

"You take a look at those 300 cable channels," Hyatt said, "and I'll bet 100 of them have virtually no audience at all."

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Source: The Philadelphia Inquirer

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