The Channel That Let Viewers In, Then Sold the Door

In 2005, television gave viewers a familiar bargain: sit down, be counted, watch what the channel had chosen. Current TV offered a more curious one. Make a film, send it in, and you might find your work between the news and the ads. The founders, Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, had bought their way onto the dial by acquiring an existing channel. Now they wanted the people on the other side of the screen to help fill it.

This was no hobbyist video site with a broadcast afterthought. Current was a cable network, a website, a training ground for amateur filmmakers, an advertising laboratory, and later a political news outlet. It served viewers who wanted fresh stories, creators who wanted a screen bigger than their laptop, advertisers eager to reach young adults, and distributors that needed programming for their subscribers. Each group wanted something slightly different. That made the enterprise interesting. It also made it hard to steer.

A remote control with an upload button

Gore and Hyatt formed the venture in 2002. In 2004 it acquired NewsWorld International, a relatively obscure cable channel whose chief attraction was quite concrete: agreements putting it inside millions of homes. Current launched the following August in about 19 million U.S. households. To a viewer flicking through the lineup, it looked less like the solemn news service one might expect from a former vice president and more like a shelf of compact curiosities.

Instead of relying entirely on half-hour shows, the early channel used two-to-ten-minute segments it called pods. Some were produced by Current staff, including the investigative work of Vanguard. Others arrived from the audience. By 2008 the company's own breakdown put original productions at roughly 60% of programming, viewer-created work at 30%, and acquired material at 10%. That is an unusually clear picture of a media experiment: amateurs were substantial enough to shape the channel, but professionals still did most of the work.

Current.com was the workshop behind the screen. Aspiring filmmakers could upload a video, receive community and staff feedback, use production lessons and rights resources, and perhaps see the finished work broadcast. Current generally paid a small one-time fee for chosen viewer videos and acquired broad distribution rights. The arrangement solved a real problem for emerging creators: a camera was becoming affordable, but a national audience remained difficult to reach.

A million people could be allowed to submit. Only a small number could occupy the schedule.The bottleneck behind participatory TV

The bill arrived by cable

The word “viewer” suggests a relationship with an audience. The accounts reveal a second relationship, with the companies that controlled the wires. Current earned monthly affiliate fees for each subscriber household receiving the channel. It also sold advertising: ordinary spots, sponsorships, online placements, and an inventive format called Viewer-Created Ad Messages. A brand supplied a brief; amateur filmmakers made commercials; the website's community weighed in; the sponsor could put a selected ad on air. This gave advertisers a way to buy young creative voices rather than merely rent space around them.

But the striking numbers in Current's 2008 securities filing sit far from the creative brief. Revenue reached $63.8 million in 2007, up from $37.9 million in 2006. Advertising accounted for about 16% of 2007 revenue. The rest was overwhelmingly affiliate fees. Current also lost $9.9 million that year. The network could expand rapidly by signing distributors, but a million more available homes did not mean a million more attentive viewers.

This is what it cost to operate the idea at broadcast scale. Current had to buy a route onto cable, pay for studios and employees, build an online platform, market the channel, clear rights, and maintain distribution agreements. Viewer-made films were its least expensive programming, the filing said. Yet cheap supply of some shows did not make the whole network cheap. It had built an innovative front door onto a conventional and expensive house.

There were trophies. Current won a 2007 Emmy for interactive television. It grew beyond the United States into the U.K., Ireland and Italy, and eventually described a footprint of about 70 million television households worldwide. It also discovered a less agreeable distinction: awards, distribution and viewing are three different measurements. In late 2011, even after a high-profile news hire, its average audience at any given time during the fourth quarter was reported at 28,000.

When the audience did not arrive on cue

What failed first was the assumption that access and novelty would reliably turn into a large audience for advertisers. Current's own filing called its media model unproven and warned that advertising growth depended on attracting young viewers. The site was still new and produced little revenue. It applied to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering in 2008, then withdrew the plan in 2009 amid poor market conditions. The company kept its cable footprint, but the original promise had not yet found a repeatable viewing habit at sufficient scale.

The subsequent change in programming was telling. In 2011 Keith Olbermann joined as host and chief news officer, bringing Countdown to Current. Cenk Uygur's The Young Turks and Jennifer Granholm's The War Room followed. The network that had tried to loosen television's schedule increasingly looked like a scheduled progressive news channel. A well-known host was a familiar way to get viewers to return at the same hour every night. It also placed Current into direct competition with established cable news operations that had larger audiences and deeper resources.

The pivot brought attention, but no simple rescue. Olbermann and the network parted acrimoniously in 2012. A few months earlier, his show had been by far Current's largest draw, averaging 311,000 viewers including replays in one reported quarter; the rest of the channel was much smaller. One charismatic program can lift a schedule and expose how little gravity the schedule has without it.

The buyer wanted the address

Al Jazeera's 2013 purchase supplies the ending with a twist. The sale price was not disclosed; contemporary estimates put it near $500 million. Al Jazeera wanted a stronger route into American homes, where its English-language channel had faced limited cable carriage. It announced Al Jazeera America, built a new news operation, and replaced Current on the dial that August. Current's brand and programming did not travel intact. The distribution agreements were the prize.

Gore and Hyatt later described one founding goal as “to give voice to those who are not typically heard.” That does not make the original experiment foolish. Current proved that a national channel could treat viewers as contributors rather than an audience to be measured in silence. It gave emerging filmmakers tools, feedback, money and airtime. It made advertisers commission work from a community. It also showed that a participatory editorial system does not repeal the economics of a medium: someone still pays for the slot, and someone must come back often enough to make that payment sensible.

There is a practical idea to borrow. Ask people to make a specific thing, give them useful tools and editorial feedback, pay for the work you use, and let the audience see how a contribution becomes a finished product. Then measure the behavior that sustains the operation: repeat attention and actual revenue, separately from nominal reach. This play is most plausible where creators get meaningful distribution and the operator can afford to review and improve submissions. It becomes much harder when scarce airtime, costly carriage, or a host-driven schedule overwhelms the community that made the pitch distinctive.

Current TV began by opening the studio door. In the end, another broadcaster bought the key to the building. The irony is neat, perhaps too neat. But that is what makes the case useful: the public fell in love with the invitation; the buyer valued the address.