Al Gore vs. useful information

Those of you living in Canada may not know this, but up until yesterday the CBC broadcast in the US, under the name CBC Newsworld International. My New York-based co-workers found this foreign perspective highly useful during wars and other paranoia-inducing catastrophes, when they would huddle around a TV watching Peter Mansbridge like so much samizdat, but alas, this is no longer an option. Al Gore has decided to take over the channel and turn it into the “cringe-inducing” Current TV, which he describes as “CNN meets MTV”. The approach seems to consist of short human-interest pieces (called “pods”, not “programmes”) strung together with hand-held camera shots of hip young anchors. Oh, well. At least the nightly news is still available on line, as are feeds of CBC radio broadcasts.