March 14, 2007	Wednesday	Safar 24, 1428

LONDON: Former US vice-president turned Oscar-winning environmental campaigner Al Gore, on Monday, unveiled the British version of his Current TV network, claiming it was the first example of “television for the internet generation”.

He said the new service, which relies on viewer-created content for more than a third of its schedule, marked a media revolution that would prove as pivotal as the invention of the printing press.

Current TV is aimed at the 18- to 34-year-olds increasingly turning to the net, mobile phones and a myriad of digital channels to complement mainstream media habits.

Instead of a traditional schedule, programming is made up of various branded “pods” of three to eight minutes in length designed to be “snacked on”.

Subjects may veer from a first person report from Somalia to a polemic on Britishness via coverage of a “guerrilla gardener” who plants flowers in public spaces, all interspersed with more conventional segments covering music, news and adventure travel.

Through a tie-up with Google, the channel airs a three-minute news bulletin every hour based on what users of the search engine are looking for.

Other partnerships include a Lonely Planet travel guide and a project with the British Library that will encourage viewers to vote one video story per month into a “unique 12-month video snapshot of the UK”, which will be preserved for posterity.

But it is the user-generated content that Mr Gore said would set Current TV apart. The UK launch is the first in a planned international expansion designed to create a “global conversation”. Mr Gore, who has taken on a high profile role as an environmental campaigner since making the global warming documentary An Inconvenient Truth, has been developing Current TV for more than five years and launched the US version 18 months ago.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service