http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7433219/site/newsweek/WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY
By Brad Stone
Silicon Valley Correspondent
Newsweek Updated: 2:19 p.m. ET April 8, 2005
April 8 - This week, I told former vice president Al Gore why his new cable-television venture would never work.
But first, an admission. When I first saw Google in the '90s, I thought to myself: What, another search engine? And I recall writing a few boosterish dot-com articles back in early 2000, right before the crash. So that tells you what you need to know about my business instincts. And I’m certainly no student of television history.
Nevertheless, at the renovated San Francisco studios of Gore’s media company, INdTV, last Monday, I couldn’t help feeling pessimistic. The former veep and his colleagues unveiled their plans for a “Network for the Internet Generation.” After confounding the gathered crowd with a new name for the network (Current) that’s less inspired than the original, INdTV, Gore and his crew broke out some specifics.
Current, which will formally launch in August, plans to harness the growing ranks of creative young filmmakers armed with cheap digital video cameras and PC editing software, who are now uploading their clips like crazy onto the Web. The network hopes these digital auteurs will submit material and plans to splice, dice and mingle the best clips with its own footage, interspersed with commentary from hip on-air VJs. Segments—which the Current folks are calling “pods”—will run to six minutes in length, perfect for young adults with attention spans that don’t last much longer than the average music video. Subject matter will range from office life to fashion to faith—and presumably whatever other surprises the young filmmakers serve up. At the top and bottom of every hour, Google, a partner, will provide the equivalent of a news break, presenting the top search terms for subjects such as celebrities and dating (presumably filtering out the inevitable obscene searches.)
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