Al Gore, Businessman

(3 of 4)

Hyatt insists that Current will make its mark in a 500-channel cable universe as "the brand identified as the leader of citizen journalism," but the sample content featured on its website suggests it has a way to go. There is a gripping, sensitively shot video of Indian families cremating their loved ones on the Ganges but also one of a rapper who dresses as a jelly doughnut--which is funny for the first 40 seconds or so of its four minutes. A video account of the experiences of Current's executive director, Evan Stone, as a new parent (complete with a close-up of a dirty diaper) gives the feeling of being forced to watch a home movie.

For all of Current's promises to offer consumers of television more control in its creation--"to give young people a voice," Gore declared at the network's prelaunch in April--some young content creators are already questioning its openness. A lively blog on which aspiring video makers swapped ideas about the network's mission, recruitment process, video postings and politics cropped up on Current's website in its early days. But after would-be correspondents started criticizing management's policies and unresponsiveness, the blog was shut down.

The video makers are especially put off by the network's requirement that anyone who submits digital content must hand over most rights to Current--a major disappointment to aspiring artists who want to make money off their work elsewhere or share it with friends via video logs or at film festivals. And although Current promised to hire hundreds of digital correspondents, contributors must now sign on as free-lancers, who get neither salary nor benefits. In frustration with Current's tight controls, Josh Wolf, 23, a filmmaker and volunteer organizer for Current's San Francisco "meet-up group," at which digital artists view and critique one another's videos, launched his own alternative to Current. Called the Rise Up Network, the collective of video makers is creating a website on which anyone can feature his or her own videos. "A lot of people feel disaffected," he says.

But Gore insists that Current TV has, if anything, become more open. "Our vision was then, and is now, to go from the old studio-based production model that is still used by everybody else out there, where a small group of people in a television studio makes the programming that everybody else watches, and go to a democratized medium where everybody has a chance to learn how to make television," he says. The network will even teach people how, with free online media training by veteran journalists, educators from journalism and film schools, and celebrities.