Current TV is an independent media company, led by former Vice President Al Gore, entrepreneur Joel Hyatt and a growing team of industry professionals and young creatives. They are coming together around a common mission: to share the world's most dominant media platform - television - with a diverse group of people who want an outlet for their creativity, their voices heard and their perspectives valued.
And yet, with that mission in mind, the channel has a checkered past. Originally named INdTV, it first appeared in the summer of 2004, with a series of public recruitment events. The first of these events was held at the Bambuddha Lounge in San Francisco on August 25th. The San Francisco event announced the launch of the Digital Correspondent position at INdTV and the launch of their website which contained a video blog page maintained by Gotham Chopra.
The innovative use of the video blog, or vlog, created a unique atmosphere for potential employees as conversations quickly developed within the comments for each vlog entry. One applicant named Adrian quickly established the Unofficial INdTV Forum, and a community quickly developed within the two forums. Applicants started holding meet-ups in several cities throughout the United States.
On November 22nd INdTV made their final post onto their vlog. Their post stated that all the applicants would be notified about their potential employment in the near future and to contact INdTV if they don't hear anything by December 5th (or was it the first?), to contact INdTV. On December 4th, the unofficial INdTV forum went down for a number of days, by that time almost everyone on the INdTV forum had received the rejection e-mail, and a few had been told they'd hear something in the future. The forum returned briefly, but it was not longer the junction it was prior to the crash of the server. Adrian went on to start Interject, and a number of INdTV digital correspondent applicants frequented the forum for a while.
Indications are that INdTV is no longer pursuing the Digital Correspondent program. Michael Rosenblum, who was spearheading the project has since left the company, and the INdTV vlog has been replaced by a competition to submit short video that falls within 10 categories.
On April 4, INdTV announced that:
- It would be known as Current
- It would launch on August 1st in the place of Newsworld International, which Gore and Hyatt bought for that purpose.
- It is partnering with Google for a half-hourly news update that would reflect Google searches
- The rest of Current's programming will be in "pods" (reflecting off of the iPod and its Shuffle capability), varying anywhere from 5 minutes to 15 seconds (similar to the CBC-TV program ZeD).
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