More trouble for Al Gore: Now his TV network needs massaging

Poor Al Gore. Current TV was supposed to be the vehicle he used to conquer the media. That vehicle has sputtered, stalled, and is now sitting on the side of the road waiting for a tow truck.

The Hollywood Reporter has the tragic television tale:

For much of the past year, Current TV has been quietly undergoing an overhaul that will change just about everything but the struggling channel’s name. Current declined comment for this story.

It’s a revitalization project Gore & Co. embarked on after exhausting a more lucrative possibility: selling the channel. Current’s founding partner, Joel Hyatt, spent much of 2009 shopping the network with a price tag that wildly overestimated the company’s worth, confirmed sources at several conglomerates. Current even had extensive sale talks as far back as 2007 with Google, where Gore serves as a senior advisor.

Now the focus has shifted to fixing Current, perhaps with an eye toward a sale down the road. Last July, Hyatt was replaced as CEO by Mark Rosenthal, the former MTV Networks COO who is rebuilding the channel in the traditional mold Gore avowed to avoid, only to suffer the consequences.

…

For all the brilliance he has displayed grasping the meteorological dynamics governing the globe, Gore has miscalculated those of a slightly less complex world: the TV business. The radical ambitions he brought to the environment didn’t pan out the same way in cable; the television will not be revolutionized.

Not a good year for the man who was once the next president of the United States. Global warming has been exposed as a fraud. His wife dumped him. His massage therapist spilled the beans on him. And now his cable TV operation has disappointed him.

On the other hand, that’s made it a pretty good year for us.

Source: Hollywood Reporter