TVSquad

My friends, if you thought the coverage that's been going on since the day after the 2006 Congressional election has been overwhelming, you ain't seen nothing yet. Come sunrise on November 4th the television airwaves will be inundated with election coverage, comment, pontification, and general BS. Red states will become blue, blue states will become red, graphs will be drawn on easel boards with black marker and someone will predict the winner of the entire Presidential election at 7:00:01 p.m.

So, if you are wholly disinterested in the old way that the elections are covered you may want to tune into Current TV, or its website if you don't have the channel on your digital box, for an alternative to get the results you need. In this case, it's you, the couch potato that you are, who will be providing the coverage. It's called "Current Diggs the Election" and the way it works will be unique.

This seems to still be under the category of "rumor" for the time being, but a couple news outlets are reporting that Madeleine Smithberg, who co-created The Daily Show along with Lizz Winstead, has been hired as an executive producer for Al Gore's not very successful Current TV. If this turns out to be true, it will be interesting to find out just why Smithberg was chosen for this position. I admit I know very little about her outside of The Daily Show, and if IMDb is to be trusted, she hasn't done much else except work on The Daily Show. Maybe Al Gore wants to turn Current TV into a comedy channel. You know, a channel people laugh with instead of at. Okay, probably not.

Most people know that public radio is a huge thing here in Minnesota. We are the home of Lake Wobegon, after all. Recently, Minnesota Public Radio filed a lawsuit against Al Gore's Current TV, claiming that internet users would confuse Gore's independent network with "The Current" a popular MPR-owned music station here in the Twin Cities. The lawsuit claims the radio station had already applied for a trademark of the name "Current" four months before Gore's new venture was changed from "INdTV" to "Current TV." Representatives from Current TV issued a statement noting that over 300 businesses use the word "current" in their name.

It's easy to dismiss this as just a frivolous lawsuit. After all, who's going to confuse a radio station with an independent TV network? What bothers me even more, though, is that public radio should be championing a TV network that eschews corporate news for citizen journalism. I would have expected MPR to support Current TV, not try to bring it down.