-By Warner Todd Huston
After inventing the Internet, Al Gore hoped to re-invent TV when he helped found the Current TV network. Now the struggling network is admitting that it is looking to put itself up for sale.
Current TV CEO Joel Hyatt told the New York Post that they’ve gotten a lot of inquiries from other media companies “interested in acquiring our company.” Hyatt even claimed that they’d had “three inquiries” this year alone. Because of all this “interest” in buying out Current TV, Hyatt said they are now looking into selling. “As a consequence [of the interest], we thought it might be useful to engage expertise to help us evaluate our strategic options.”
Current TV is now in the process of interviewing investment banks so a formal sales pitch has yet to be developed.
Launching in 2005 with youth-oriented programming Current TV is now a sort of pale shadow of MSNBC with lefty hosts such as Joy Behar and disgraced former New York politician Elliot Spitzer. The network hired but ended up firing the volatile Keith Olbermann in 2011.
The Post reports that SNL Kagan estimates that Current makes 12 cents a subscriber from pay-TV and brought in $82 million last year. Ad revenue is estimated at a mere $16.9 million annually. How these low numbers match up to operating costs is unknown.
The network appears in about 60 million homes.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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