Akimbo, Current Media could embody TV’s next generation

Music blares from speakers mounted on a lime-green truck, and a dude in a red leather jacket, flip-flops and spiked hair coaxes me aboard and into the truck’s "video confessional booth."

I sit in the darkened cube facing a video camera. The truck belongs to Al Gore’s new cable-and-Web operation, Current Media, and is parked right outside Current’s headquarters. The spiked-hair guy says I should confess anything, and the truck will send it to the Current.tv website — which, in some cases, feeds content to Current’s cable channel, reaching 20 million viewers.

I consider unburdening about Becky and the Marshmallow Fluff in the coat room at the frat party the night after John Lennon died, but … nah.

Besides, I’m here on a mission: to glimpse the next iteration of television.

…

For the past decade, the Internet has opened the door for people and subjects that wouldn’t otherwise make it into mainstream media. Current is now using that opening to change mainstream media. And the industry is paying attention.

Kevin Maney

Full Story: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kevinmaney/2005-10-25-tv-next-gen_x.htm