Al Gore's Convenient IPO

CurrentTV's parent is launching a public offering whose terms, though sweet for the company's high-profile founder, may be inconvenient for investors

Al Gore's CurrentTV is about to go public, and he stands to make a bundle from the IPO. Getty Images

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By Ronald Grover

March 6, 2008 at 10:01 AM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

What's an Emmy worth? If you're former Vice-President Al Gore, it's worth just north of $1 million a year and roughly another $48 million in stock. That's a hefty sum for a guy who of late has traveled the globe as a goodwill ambassador for mankind, stressing the need for humanity to wake up to the dangers of global warming.

Where's Gore getting the dough? From a tiny, lightly watched cable TV channel called CurrentTV. The channel is available in roughly 41 million U.S. homes (about half the viewers of ESPN or CNN) and over the last three years has lost $31.5 million while increasing revenues to $53.5 million from $23.4 million three years ago. Still, CurrentTV may be the next hot thing—it won the Emmy last year for its ability to present a forum for user-generated content from its mostly younger viewers. "It is true participatory media," Gore told me in a Beverly Hills hotel room the day after the Emmy presentation, grasping the gold statue as he spoke.