Current TV

Channels. Posted on May 14, 2007 by Moon Unit

Channel: Current TV
DISH Network channel number: 196
The menu: Citizen-generated documentary content in bite-sized blips.
The dish: If you'd invented the internets, won the presidency, and saved us from global warming, you'd probably take it easy, watch a few YouTubes, and settle into e-tirement. Not Al Gore: in the early Oughts, he decided to take on conventional cable news, and in 2005 Current TV sprang fully formed from his considerable noggin. The channel airs some traditional documentary programming, but the big appeal is the Viewer-Created Content; do-gooders with video cameras geek out on short subjects, post their tiny docs on Current's website, and, usually, get voted off the island. Contenders left bloodied but standing march to the tube, where Current shows them in thematic blocks. Filmmakers who make the cut get a little cash and encouragement, and for any up-and-comer the channel offers an easy break. It's short-attention-span theatre for the Brooklyn lefty set; watch it for too long and you'll be overwhelmed with the MTVian collage of topics and issues, but feel free to tune out - Current takes advantage of the length of its content (everything seems to be 3 minutes long) by replaying it frequently throughout the day.
Check, please: Great for a quick fix - there's always something interesting on - but no 'shows' make this 'channel' hard to get into.