Today is another sobering day for the tech and media world. Current TV has confirmed that 80 people are being let go, leaving the company with 300 employees worldwide. We heard multiple reports of significant layoffs at Current TV earlier in the day. One source, whose spouse works at Current TV, warns of a “major bloodbath today at CurrentTV, across all departments,” with cuts hitting “most of the people in the LA production office, as stuff is being outsourced.”
Current Media’s COO, Joanna Drake Earl told me over the phone that the layoffs are due to a shifting of programming strategy and are not a cost-cutting measure. Current is shifting away from in-house production and towards out sourcing segments, which will be done via acquisitions, co-productions, and the use of outside studios. Layoffs took place in Current’s San Francisco, Los Angeles, London and New York offices, but the cuts were mostly made in the production and programming areas. Earl added that this year is set to be Current’s most profitable year since its launch. See the entire statement issued by Current below. → Read More
Last March, two reporters for Current TV were caught and detained by the North Korean military after illegally crossing into the country from China as they reported on fleeing refugees. While some initial reports seemed optimistic that the pair — Chinese-American Laura Ling and Korean-American Euna Lee — would be released shortly in an act of good-will, that didn’t prove to be the case: both reporters were subsequently sentenced to twelve years in a North Korean labor camp for “hostile acts against the DPRK” and illegal entry into the country. Repeated calls by US officials to free the pair have seemed to fall on deaf ears.
But today, their story has a happy ending. Former President Bill Clinton has managed to convince North Korean President Kim Jong Il to pardon both reporters, only hours after arriving in North Korea during a surprise visit to the country. → Read More
Current Media, the media company backed by former Vice President Al Gore, has cancelled the $100 million IPO that it originally announced in January 2008.
In a document submitted earlier today, Current TV attributed the IPO’s cancellation to the current economy:
In light of current market conditions, the Registrant has determined not to proceed at this time with the public offering contemplated by the Registration Statement. The Registrant hereby confirms that no securities have been sold pursuant to the Registration Statement and all activity regarding the proposed public offering has been discontinued. The Registrant hereby informs the Staff that it may undertake a subsequent private offering in reliance on the safe harbor set forth in Rule 155(c) promulgated under the Act.
The media company is best known for cable channel Current TV, which is broadcast internationally to 59 million homes with markets in regions including the United States, Italy, and the UK. Current also has a strong web presence, tapping into popular social media services like Digg and Twitter for special events like the 2008 presidential election. → Read More
If you think there is too much noise about the U.S. election now, wait until next week. On Election Day, not only will every media outlet be covering the vote, but so will voters themselves who will have ample opportunity to Tweet, Digg, video, and IM the vote.
Most of these “reports” will probably consist of people telling the world that “I’m voting!” or who they just cast their vote for. Who you vote for used to be a private affair, but no more. It is almost as if your vote does not count, unless you IM or Tweet it. (But don’t worry, it does).
On the bright side, when every voter is also a potential election observer, any shenanigans can and will be instantly broadcast over the Web and quickly picked up by the mainstream media. At least there will be a clear record that can serve as a starting point for later investigation if need be. No doubt, there will be false Tweets as well. → Read More
Note: trust me, the picture makes sense once you read the quotes below. Sarah Lacy’s new book, Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good: The Rebirth of Silicon Valley and the Rise of Web 2.0 (goes on sale on Thursday, pre-order here, get free autographed copy here) does a deep dive into the histories of a number of high profile web startups. But Lacy was also able to uncover a few stories that were never covered in the day-to-day press. One of my favorites: the story of a failed 2006 attempt by Al Gore’s CurrentTV to buy Digg: At the meeting Gore ran the room. He charmed everyone on the Digg team. He remembered everyone’s name, and if someone got cut off, he was careful to come back to him and ask him to finish what he was saying. It was quite a contrast to the meeting with Murdoch. “It made me feel so good to know this guy is legit,” Kevin says, remembering and still glowing. “You could just tell.” … They came back a few weeks later. Gore was there again, with a glossy PowerPoint presentation that showed the CurrentTV and Digg logos coming together. Gore was standing in front of the screen, eyes on Kevin, with the Digg logo projected across his forehead. Kevin was trying his hardest to pay attention to what Gore was saying, but he was focusing at this large Digg logo on Al Gore’s forehead, thinking, “Oh. My. God.” That night twenty-nine-year-old Kevin called his parents. “You’re never going to believe what I saw on Al Gore’s forehead today,” he said. CurrentTV ultimately made an offfer “at least in the range of $100 million,” but Rose and Digg CEO Jay Adelson walked away due to issues of control going forward. Digg has been the subject of nearly constant buyout speculation, starting with a $4 million offer from Jason Calcanis in 2005 and a rumored $30 million deal with Yahoo in January 2006. More recently we reported their recent efforts to sell through investment bank Allen & Co. The complete history is here. At the time of the offer, Digg had just 1.3 million or so monthly unique visitors according to Comscore. Today, Comscore says they have 13.3 million worldwide monthly uniques (this is almost certainly lower than actual). But sources have been telling us that they’ve been unable to get to their desired $200 → Read More
As a follow up to our previous post on TV network activity on the Internet and through iTunes, we’ve further explored television programming and how it’s playing out on the web beyond the major networks. I will steer clear of yahoo, google, youtube… all the sites that have been covered extensively on this site. Instead, I want to highlight a few of the less covered services. It’s hard to draw a line between the sites I just mentioned and those I’ll discuss below, as they share many features (and many use Flash as the underlying technology). One difference is the sites above don’t make programming decisions for users. The sites below do offer some form of programming – there are decisions made by someone about what to present on these sites and when to present it. There’s room for both approaches online and while most eyes and venture dollars are flowing to video portals right now, I believe we’ll eventually see a similar interest from the startup community in programming. I’m Too Old For This!!! Not surprisingly, much online programming, like MTV Overdrive, caters to an under-25 crowd, but there’s a selection of good stuff for the rest of us: BloombergTV and MLB.tv, for example, offer relevant content and strong channel-like experiences online. In the youth market, the influence of MTV is unmistakable. ManiaTV, Fuse.tv, MusicplusTV, and CurrentTV, while each certainly different in its own right, believe that some combination of music, reality, edginess, and/or political and social awareness, are the keys to success. ManiaTv So this is what happened to Tom Green? Maybe I’m not too old for this, because I like ManiaTv. Check out Freak Show! There’s enough good stuff to watch on here that I’m actually surprised it doesn’t have a bigger audience, particularly given the explosion in video sites in the last 6 months. I think there’s room for this kind of programming and while the Alexa numbers don’t suggest a flop, it’s certainly not booming. Whether or not their audience is sufficient for profitability, I don’t know. At least they don’t have to worry about huge production costs. CurrentTV Best known as the Al Gore vehicle, Current is for those a bit more politically minded and socially active. There’s a good lineup of original programming, there appears to be pretty strong community participation, and I find it to be a nice usable site, but it → Read More
