Viewers star on Gore’s TV channel

Former US Vice President Al Gore has promised to “democratise” television in the

UK at the launch of a channel featuring programmes made by viewers. Current TV will broadcast non-fiction videos by “people making TV for the first time, and making it well”, said Mr Gore, one of the channel’s founders.

The channel launched in the

US in 2005 and is now available to about 40 million homes.
The British version will be tailored to the

UK, with Google, Lonely Planet and the British Library all signing up as partners.

Statistics from Google’s search engine will be featured every half hour – “our version of the news”, Mr. Gore said.

The “news” segment will include charts of the most-searched terms as well as video clips of popular Google news stories, he added.
Every month, viewers will vote for one short film – or “pod”, as Current TV is branding them – to be archived in the British Library.

‘Global conversation’

Mr. Gore said there was a need for “a global conversation” among 18- to 34-year-olds, adding that he hoped their contributions would help to make TV a more “democratic process”.

“A conversation that shuts out individuals begins to get a bit stale,” he said.
He also promised the channel would not take a campaigning stance on issues like the environment, on which Mr. Gore has been a prominent activist.
“This is not going to be a political or ideological channel in any shape or form – we like to think it’s more revolutionary than that.”