BSkyB to launch UK version of Al Gore’s Current TV
UK satellite broadcaster BSkyB joined forces with Al Gore today to unveil a British version of his Current TV, a channel showing user-generated programmes. BSkyB Chief Executive James Murdoch and the former US vice president told Reuters in a joint interview they hoped to use the channel to democratise the broadcast medium by allowing viewers to produce and broadcast their own short films. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.
“What we’re seeing here is just quality journalism finding new ways of coming to the fore and much more plurality in terms of the voices being heard,” said Murdoch, the younger son of media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, whose News Corp owns 39 percent of BSkyB. ”I think you will always have an audience for something professionally produced … but what this does is really shows us that nobody has a sort of god-given monopoly on what professional story-telling is.”
Gore, who narrowly lost the 2000 US presidential election to George W Bush, launched the channel with business partner and entrepreneur Joel Hyatt in August 2005 with fast-paced non-fiction programmes, or “pods”, aimed at 18-to-34-year-old Internet-savvy viewers. The viewer-produced videos last from a few seconds to 15 minutes and cover technology, the environment, fashion or politics. Viewers can send their videos to the
www.current.tv Web site for selection for the channel.
Viewer-created programming makes up about 30 percent of the schedule for Current TV in the United States while the remainder is current affairs content produced by the channel. Murdoch said he learned about the power of user-generated videos after his company’s Sky News channel asked viewers for their footage of the Asian tsunami in 2004 and the attacks on the London transport system in 2005. ”It was one of the things that actually twigged for me to say … there is a whole community of people out there who are very eager to share what they’re seeing,” he said.
Current TV reaches nearly 30 million homes in the United States and will reach another 8.2 million Sky households when it launches in the next few months. Hyatt told Reuters the channel would be aimed at a UK audience using content from UK viewers but that it would also use videos from contributors around the world.
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