Enter Al Gore, defender of all that is green, who has just launched his successful web TV service - Current TV - on Virgin and Sky digital television in the UK. All of the content on the channel will come from non-conventional sources: one third of it is made and submitted via the internet for scrutiny by the television executives, who then decide whether to screen it, and the other two thirds are voted on by the general public. The user-generated TV content will feature home-recorded video shorts, branded "pods" by Current TV, generally ranging from three to eight minutes long.
In addition to this, half hourly news bulletins and other dynamically generated content will show the current top searches on Google UK, amongst other things - with the channel boasting it has "the keys to the Google mega-computer" - a claim that is sure to have many web lovers brimming with envy!
This feature may prove to display some interesting results, and could expose to the masses the way Google is used in Britain. We could in fact see a new fad of "TV bombing" emerge, with the potential to create a similar phenomenon to the now defused Google Bomb, with the TV's viewers collaborating to search for a humorous phrase all at one - producing an artificial spike for particular search query, which would then be reported by the station. A truly dedicated spammer could even employ this technique to promote a particular product - but it's likely that Google will be somewhat wiser to this sort of technique.
Mr Gore insists that the channel is not dedicated to airing anyone's political views - least of all his own. After attracting 40 million subscribers in the US with its irreverent take on the way television should be, the TV station hopes to achieve similar levels of success in the UK.
With the explosive growth of social media and user-generated content, traditional media seems to be playing a constant game of catch-up to meet constantly changing user demands. Whether Current TV takes off with UK digital viewers is another matter - but we can guarantee you that, somewhere in the country, an online prankster will make a joke out of it.
