ALL NEWS Gore buys cable-TV network

The network will aim for an audience of viewers age 18 to 34.
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Al Gore's a liberal, but he won't play one on TV.
Though he's made no secret of his desire to create a lib alternative to Fox News Channel, Gore said his new youth-oriented cable outlet "isn't going to be a liberal network, a Democratic network or a political network."
The former vice president and entrepreneur Joel Hyatt will launch their own 24-hour cable news network by buying Newsworld International from Vivendi Universal, it was announced this week.
The deal, estimated to be worth $70 million, was made public at the National Cable and Television Association convention in New Orleans.
The new network -- no name or launch date yet -- will feature "irreverent and bold" news and public-affairs programming aimed at 18-to-34-year-old viewers, said Gore. It's expected to be based in San Francisco.
Founded in Toronto in 1994, NWI is a 24-hour digital network focusing on international news. It's distributed only in the United States, where it reaches about 20 million subscribers.
NWI relocated its headquarters to New York in May 2000, when it was sold by USA Networks to Vivendi.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corp. and its international correspondents produce most of NWI's content, and will do so under Gore, said NWI president Patrick Vien.
A fresh 30-minute newscast runs at the top of the hour, 24 hours a day. In addition, NWI carries newscasts from Britain, Germany and Japan, among other countries.
Officers
Gore, a telecommunications wonk as Bill Clinton's V.P. from 1993 to '00, will chair the NWI board. Hyatt, ex-finance chairman for the Democratic National Committee and an unsuccessful Senate candidate in Ohio in '94, will be chief executive officer.
NWI's advisory board includes Apple Computer's Steve Jobs and Orville Schell, journalism dean at the University of California, Berkeley.
Among the individual backers is Bradley Whitford of NBC's "West Wing." Whitford, who plays deputy chief of staff Josh Lyman, is a liberal Democrat who campaigned for Ed Rendell in the '02 Pennsylvania governor's race.
Hyatt offered no specifics on programming at the news conference, but said his goal "is not to be the 251st cable network that looks like the others."
Gore, a long-ago newspaper reporter in Nashville, said he and Hyatt had met with many young, creative people "who need a venue to compete in a meritocracy of ideas."
Gore is a senior adviser to Google, a director of Apple Computer, and a visiting professor at three universities. He said he'd devote most of his time to the network.
Hyatt teaches at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. His Hyatt Legal Services, which provided low-cost counsel, grew to more than 3 million clients.