..and here's something about my former favorite guy ("it's a long story!"), Al Gore. at least now he's got something to do. i'm pleased with that. (the bloated, bearded guy i saw post-Election 2000 really just put me off. at least he looked much more decent in magazine pic.)

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DO-IT-YOURSELF NEWS
Viewers pick what to cover on Al Gore's network.

By Jonathan Darman, Newsweek International

Sept. 26 - Oct. 3, 2005 issue - No one expected a television thrill ride when word got out that former U.S. vice president Al Gore planned to launch a cable news network. To some, Gore's professed ambitions as chairman of Current TV - to create a democratic news space in which young people could tell stories about the world around them in a format their peers could relate to - seemed like just another opportunistic attempt at edginess from the "inventor of the Internet." Current even had a focus-group-ready slogan just asking to be plastered on the side of a bus: "television homepage for the Internet generation." Zing.

And yet for all of its predictable pandering, Current TV did manage to deliver a major surprise when it debuted this summer: Gore's network was actually, well, kind of good. The network's broadcasting approach takes heavy cues from the emerging world of Internet news, eschewing traditional half-hour broadcasts in favor of two- to seven-minute "pods" - short-subject features submitted, in many cases, by Current's own viewers through a screening process on the network's Web site. Programmers maintain that the jarring subject jumps - from street violence in California one moment to street performers in Colombia the next - allow the network to cover the broad scope of world news. Interspersed amid these featurettes are brief headline roundups from Google News. Though Current is so far broadcast to only 20 million U.S. homes, the network hopes to use the Internet to create buzz and lure more viewers.

But Current's greatest innovation so far - one likely to spread throughout the industry - has been to make the news, not the news deliverers, the star. For nearly three decades, network news in big markets like the United States has lived and died by the fame and "relatability" of its anchors. But as corporate parents put more pressure on news divisions to churn out profits, some industry leaders say the economics of the star system are becoming harder to justify. A transcendent TV news star, after all, can cost upwards of $10 million a year. Add a handful of those to the roster, and a network loses the luxury of even considering reporting on events in Buenos Aires or Mumbai.

It's hardly a surprise, then, that several U.S. networks are pondering retooled evening newscasts that place the anchor in a diminished role. But to solve the eternal dilemma of broadcast news - how to bring new viewers into the mix -programmers are turning to less conventional means. In its coverage of Hurricane Katrina, CNN used footage of the storm and its disastrous aftermath supplied by amateur filmmakers shooting on digital cameras throughout the Southeastern United States. The network has experimented with this trick in coverage of big news stories going back to 9/11 - the idea being that there's no better way to create a sense of urgency in news viewers than to make them a part of the story. Like other broadcast networks, CNN is giving increased prominence on its Web site to video of stories that generate heavy traffic from Web viewers - allowing news consumers to become news directors.

In this respect, Current TV, with its viewer-supplied, viewer-controlled content, is ahead of the pack. But the question remains whether the very concept of a network is obsolete in the Internet age. Gore's network may find itself desperately picking up the scraps from two polarized groups of news viewers: those who prefer traditional, formal broadcasts and those who require programming to be purely democratic and unrehearsed. For the moment, though, the former vice president finds himself where he has always wanted to be: ahead of the curve.

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
URL: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/9378692/site/newsweek/

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