Current TV, Al Gore’s experimental outlet for audience-created content, can be viewed only by cable customers paying premium prices for digital programming, the San Francisco Weekly reports. “We stay in touch with what our customers want, and right now I would say [Current] is definitely a niche channel,” said one cable company executive.
But some suspect the cable companies’ lukewarm reception is really payback for when Gore, as a U.S. senator, helped push an act that cost the cable industry millions of dollars by restricting how cable operators charge consumers.