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I *used* to watch Bill Mahr for the
same reason, but he consistantly got my Bp too HIGH lol Couldn't stomach
it.....lol
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 10:18
AM
Subject: Re: [Sndbox] VTV
To me there is a big difference between being an openly
liberal
network and the "big three" that *pretend* to be unbiased and
are
not. I hope Al gets it off the ground... I will watch it to see what
the
other side is thinking. I am weird that way... I watch Bill Mahr
just
to get my BP up and think that James Carville is funny as
hell.
On Wednesday, October 15, 2003, at 10:10 AM, Greg
Hopper wrote:
That's
all we need, more liberal drivel...
-----
Original Message -----
From:
Charles
To: 'The Sandbox Discussion
List'
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2003 9:21
AM
Subject: [Sndbox]
VTV
<image.tiff>Al
Gore Wants His VTV
by Joe Hagan
Al wants his
VTV.
As former Vice President Al Gore edges toward
mini-media-moguldom, press sources quoted his partners this week as saying
that Mr. Gore would go younger, not leftier—and now, if his plans work,
The Observer has learned, Mr. Gore’s news channel could be …
VTV.
V for victory, V for Vice President, V for Vermont, which Mr.
Gore won by 30,000 votes in 2000.
In April, Mr. Gore’s principle
business partner, Joel Hyatt, purchased a Web site called V.tv from The .tv
Corporation, which supplies .tv domain extensions to customers like TBS, the
Lifetime Channel and PAX. The company’s Web site lists Mr. Hyatt as V.tv’s
administrative contact and as a representative of INDTV, L.L.C., located in
Stanford, Calif., where Mr. Hyatt teaches business at Stanford University.
An industry source confirmed that INDTV is the working incorporated name of
Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt’s TV project, which has been characterized in press
reports as either a news network for the reality-TV generation or a liberal
answer to Fox News, or both.
As of this writing, V.tv has not yet
been activated.
According to the .tv Web site, the price of a fancy
one-character domain name is $10,000. Mr. Hyatt didn’t return calls seeking
comment, so it’s hard to know what the V in VTV stands for. One can only
visualize Winston Churchill—or John Lennon—holding up two fingers.
If
VTV sounds like that other three-lettered channel so beloved by the Oxy
Cream generation, that’s no coincidence. Mr. Gore’s channel will reportedly
be geared toward the young Democrats of tomorrow, who can relate to Mr.
Gore’s fixation with the Internet and hand-held digital-video cameras (V for
va-va-video!). Mr. Gore was a fan of MTV’s late-90’s video-diary
show, Unfiltered, and met with the show’s producer earlier this year
to talk about similar programming concepts.
With that in mind, The
Observer called up a few members of the potential consumers in VTV’s
future target audience to see if they’d ever flip to a channel that aired
"edgy" 24-hour news about, say, Iraq and file-sharing and those bad, bad Fox
News commentators.
"Yeah, I’d be interested," said Jimmy Jung, a
23-year-old advertising assistant. "I’d be curious. I don’t know if I’d
check it out all the time, but probably."
Mr. Jung assumed that, if
Mr. Gore was involved, it would be "liberal-slanted media." In fact, Mr.
Gore’s name had to be considered, even if the respondents were fond of the
idea.
"I’d be hesitant, because it’s being operated by former Vice
President Al Gore," said Sarah Lewitinn, a 23-year-old assistant editor at
Spin magazine whose friends call her "Ultragrrrl." "But at the same
time, it’s cool that he’s trying to bring current affairs to the young. I
think people get their information from MTV anyway, so here’s a network for
them, which is kind of smart. I know a lot of people in my age group are
really unaware of what’s going on in the world. They know more about the new
Strokes album than what is going on in Iran and Iraq and Syria."
She
said it would have to be something with a sense of humor, like The Daily
Show, to work. But Elliot Aronow, 23, a public-relations assistant, said
it needed to have some gravity. "It depends how seriously they took
themselves and how much they gave young people an opportunity to report what
they see," he said. "I think young people need to be informed, but not
pandered to with all sorts of jump-cut, MTV-style editing. On the other
hand, I do believe that most conventional news is totally disconnected from
most young people."
Karen Ruttner, a 22-year-old intern at a
music-booking agency, gave The Observer the bottom line: "The truth
is, when it comes to important news, I don’t really care what people my age
think. I’d rather hear the professional opinions of, like, seasoned news
vets—people who know history and can really be comforting."
Josh
Rosenblatt, 20, a student, said he had actually worked on Mr. Gore’s
Presidential campaign in the former Vice President’s home state of Tennessee
in 2000—and even he wasn’t too sure about Mr. Gore’s new
thing.
"I like him as a person and as a candidate, but I don’t know
how much I trust him with TV," he said. "I just think, for the average
18-to-21-year-old or whatever they’re aiming for, you can’t fool them into
liking politics. At the end of the day, they have to compete with The
Daily Show."
But what do the seasoned professionals think of
it?
"I think there’s a market for it, but a small market," said Jim
Murphy, the executive producer of the CBS Evening News. "How are they
going to engage people? Personality? Smarts? You can do it by being hip, but
news is not a hip thing. College-age kids and kids in their 20’s are
interested in what’s going on, but it doesn’t mean they want to consume
news. Can you make them feel young, smart and hip by watching this? Sure.
But can you do that with homegrown documentaries? No."
For now, Mr.
Gore and his partners are still negotiating the $70 million acquisition of
digital-cable network Newsworld International from Vivendi Universal after
French-owned Vivendi agreed to merge the rest of its entertainment assets
with NBC.
Another unresolved question: Will VTV air reruns of
V, the 1980’s sci-fi series about rodent-eating aliens who take over
the earth? They should! That is, if their deal with Universal isn’t
Vaporized.
For now, the only place on the tube where you can see the
Gore-like Vulcans is on Star Trek: Enterprise. [WWOR, 9, 8
p.m.]
Charles Mims
http://www.the-sandbox.org
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