A hotly contested presidential election. A candidate refusing to concede until the courts sealed his fate. The loser left licking his chops, ultimately securing financing to turn his political base into an audience for a new cable TV channel.
The candidate? Former vice president and 2000 Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore. The channel? Current TV. The end result?
Cultural irrelevance but a nine-figure payday when the channel sold to Al Jazeera for $500 million in 2012 as the Qatar-based outlet bought itself distribution through Current’s 40 million U.S.
households. Current TV had the good fortune of breaking into cable when carriage fees flowed freely and advertiser demand for TV was nearly unlimited.
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