Newsworld International goes off U.S. air August 1st. So long to CBC News and a reasonably fair representation of both sides of conflicts and current affairs from a foreign perspective. Hello to Al Gore and Joel Hyatt whose INdTV purchased it from Vivendi in 2004 for a reported $70m under the auspices of creating a liberal counterpoint to Murdoch’s FOX which Gore now denies is his objective. He’s pledged “that INdTV will be apolitical” and claims to be “democratising” news “by handing control of the airwaves to a creatively empowered new generation”. Who’s he kidding? So why gobble up the only apolitical 24-hour news source available to Americans, unless your real aim was to snuff it out, as private interests are attempting to do to the CBC in Canada?
Current TV (the official site)’s revolutionary approach to programming was to be had by enlisting a corps of inexperienced digital journalists (fifty – never hired), selected on the basis of web submissions and put through a four-week boot camp by DV Dojo‘s Michael Rosenblum (he was dismissed without explanation), who were then supposed to produce segments in the grassroots-based ideal of MTV’s UNfiltered. As the launch dates nears, the only real revolution in evidence is the one video freelancers are waging apart from it.
Once I realized a couple months ago that comcast actually offered NWI I never bothered to figure out how to get it, I bargained em up to some silver digital deal or whatever after threatening to cancel again after watching CNN one day and there it was, an impartial, objective black screen. Presumably to get a semi-liberal news outlet you’ve got to go gold or something.
That said, this is one of the most idiotic boondoggles I’ve ever heard of. Maybe iwtnews.com will fair a little better.
Cable television is a wasteland but NWI was a decent pit stop. Typical Gore. When he waves his freak flag count on some liberal massacre occurring behind it.
Speaking of comcast and the myth of the 150-channels-of-diversity this was in my e-mail today. You might be interested if you don’t know about it already.
http://www.freepress.net/fcc/comment.php?d=92-264
Peace