Current TV Expands into Italy

LONDON, February 7: The
Emmy-winning youth-targeted news and information network Current TV has reached
a distribution agreement with SKY Italia to develop a localized channel for the
Italian market.

The deal will add an
additional 4.24 million households to the network’s global reach, making
Current TV available in 56 million households worldwide.

The Italian version of
Current TV is expected to launch this spring, at which time a localized version
of Current.com will also be introduced. In Italy, Current will be tailored
specifically to the local audience. When viewer-created content submissions are
selected for broadcast in Italy, the pieces will also be considered for Current
TV in the U.S., U.K. and Ireland, as well as the other countries that will be
added in the future.

“We’re pleased to be able
to include Italy in Current’s growing global family through this agreement with
Sky Italia,” said Joel Hyatt, the CEO and co-founder of Current. “Beginning
spring 2008, young adults in Italy will have a unique televised forum to
showcase their opinions to their domestic and international peers.”

Added Al Gore, former U.S.
Vice President and Current’s chairman and co-founder, “Our goal is to
facilitate a conversation among young people by allowing them to create
content, engage with the content of others in unique ways, and to comment on
issues and items of interest to them and their peers. With its rich culture and
history of story-telling, Italy is the perfect country to include in a
worldwide conversation on information and issues of importance for the first
truly global generation.”

Current TV was launched in
2005 with the goal of giving young adults a voice in the media by inviting them
to collaborate with the network to create television. The network was the first
to introduce viewer-created content (VC2), which now makes up approximately
one-third of Current’s programming mix. Current airs a wide range of short
form, non-fiction programming called pods on a variety of topics from politics
to lifestyle, relationships to music and more. Current’s mix of programming
also includes Infomania, a
humorous look a the day’s events; SuperNews!, an animated political and social satire, as well
as its Vanguard Journalism unit that delivers the network’s new breed of
investigative reporting. Viewers even help create the advertising seen on
Current TV through the VCAM (Viewer Created Ad Messages) initiative.

—By Irene Lew