In an interview with the New York Daily News’ David Hinckley, former vice president and Current TV founder Al Gore said that because MSNBC is owned by a corporation, they “demand balance” while his network doesn’t have to and its only obligation is to the truth:
More to the point, [Gore] says, MSNBC is owned by a corporation “that demands ‘balance.’ So they have to dutifully talk to Tea Party people.
“We don’t have to do that because we own ourselves. We are the only network that’s not beholden to a corporation. Our only obligation is to the truth.”
Gore also complained that MSNBC is all over the place, with liberal programming mixed in with a conservative in the morning. He was referring to “Morning Joe,” which is co-hosted by former Republican congressman Joe Scarborough, who has criticized conservatives and liberals alike, and Mika Brzezinski, who is one of a number of liberals on the show. That’s not really balance in the truest sense of the word, but for MSNBC it is. And where is the balance in primetime on MSNBC?
Current, which has built its liberal primetime programming around MSNBC castoffs Cenk Uygur and Keith Olbermann, has just added former Michigan governor Jennifer Grantholm to the lineup. Current is still struggling to find an audience on par with its larger cable brethren.
And the network hasn’t been helped by its squabbling with Olbermann, who has been missing from its GOP debate coverage and whose picture was mysteriously missing from a recent ad in The New York Times touting the network.
While Gore says it’s remarkable that the average age of his network’s viewers is 36, compared to the cable news average of 60, it really doesn’t matter if its top rated show, “Countdown with Keith Olbermann,” attracts only 100,000 to 200,000 viewers per night.
About the only thing Gore has proven so far with his vision of what he wants Current TV to be, at least in primetime, is that there are only so many liberal viewers to go around, and unfortunately for Gore, MSNBC and CNN have, for the most part, locked that market up.
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