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.]
