By and large, the most popular activity for American vice-presidents is to fade into obscurity; but, in this modern age of fax-machines and rock 'n roll music, one former VP is refusing to disappear. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Al Gore is gunning to be a media mogul.

Well, sort of. Rather than following any of the more traditional paths towards mogulism, Gore is launching a new cable network, called "Current", which aims to have much of its content produced by its own viewers. So, instead of creating something along the lines of a liberal Fox News, Gore has decided instead to produce something best described as, "cable-access writ large".

If it wasn't for the fact that ex-vice presidents aren't really expected to do much after they leave office, you'd probably be reading the words "career suicide" in every newspaper in the nation. Certainly, left of center media ventures tend to not be all that successful (regardless of what some people think); and, considering this fact, one would assume that Gore and his colleagues would want to take the fewest risks possible, by creating something slick and professional. Without a doubt, this is probably just what some more sensible people have been telling them. Instead, by allowing viewers to create the network's content, there's a good chance that the presentation will be a little rough, and less that appealing to the common American TV viewer. By all accounts, this is a very bad idea; just reading the phrase "viewer-created" is enough to give most media experts the willies.

The problem is, giving a national viewership the ability to genuinely shape their own media environment (American Idol notwithstanding) is something that had to be done.

Media consolidation is a well worn topic, even though it almost never comes up in the corporately dominated media (for obvious reason). The consensus, among people who study such things, is that what's good for large corporations is bad for news delivery. Unfortunately, the problem isn't something that's immediately obvious to the average viewer; possibly because as the mass-media landscape has fallen into the hands of fewer and fewer people, the Internet has exploded as a source for alternative view-points and ideologically-approved news analysis. In fact, the Internet has become the primary venue of those who want to get the word out about the media's distortions, excesses, and outright omissions.

Not that these Net-based resources have had much of an impact. For all of the loose talk about blogs vs. "legitimate journalism", their audience is often dwarfed by the numbers of television viewers tuning in to even the most historically consistent ratings losers, like CSPAN.

America needs Al Gore's Current.tv network. We could even use more than one; a conservative version of the network format could be a huge success. Even the Republican masses would like to have their own popular voice in the media. And while professional sources exist to serve them, even those sources tend to ignore "smaller" issues that might be of interest to their audiences. The important thing is to get actual, non-media people involved and in control at least some portion of our rather large media environment.

Again, the problem is that the idea of a bunch of regular Joes and Janes producing content for television is just damn unappealing, at least from a purely aesthetic sense. But, like vegetables and exercise, public involvement is a good thing, regardless of how unpleasant it is. Since it launches on August 1st, we'll have plenty of time to wonder whether Current.tv will be a huge dud, or a televisual revolution.

-B. C. Silvia