NewsMax Wires
Tuesday, May. 11, 2004

The Newsworld International Channel, currently owned by Vivendi Universal Entertainment, will be purchased by Gore's INdTV Holdings for an undisclosed sum, it was announced May 4.

Newsworld International is a 24-hour channel broadcasting international news produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. It reaches about 17 million North American households.

Gore's group said it's buying Newsworld International with an eye toward retooling it with "irreverent and bold" programming aimed chiefly at young viewers. Gore said it wouldn't push a liberal agenda.

"I understand how the confusion arose because I was in politics for 20 years, and it's a natural kind of link for someone to make, but that's not the business that we're launching," he said.

"This is not going to be a liberal network, a Democratic network or a political network," he said at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association Convention.

Gore said the network will have a target audience of people ages 18 to 34 "who want to learn more about the world and hear real-life stories about the world, and about their lives, in a voice that they recognize, from a point of view that they identify as their own."

The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. will continue to produce Newsworld's programming until INdTV begins developing its own content, company officials said. INdTV is currently carried by DirecTV, Time Warner and in some areas by Comcast.

Gore will be chairman of the board and said he will devote most of his time to the network. Joel Hyatt, an entrepreneur and former finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee who ran an unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. Senate in Ohio in 1994, will be chief executive.

Hyatt said the programming will include traditional news formats like documentaries. But he said it also will include news comedies and other "formats you haven't seen before."

Gore did not give a date for a switch in programming and said the network's current news programs would continue "for the foreseeable future."

The former vice president, who was once a newspaper reporter in Tennessee, said he was making a long-term commitment to the network. He said does not plan to run for office again, although he would not rule it out completely.

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