Glenn Beck Tried to Buy Current TV But Was Rejected
Every once in a while a tweet appears that's so silly, it must be a joke. Like this one from Glenn Beck: "Before Al-Jazeera bought Current TV, TheBlaze looked into buying it but we were rejected by progressive owners." Guess what? He's totally serious. The Wall Street Journal caught the detail in its coverage: "Glenn Beck's The Blaze approached Current about buying the channel last year, but was told that 'the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view,' according to a person familiar with the negotiations."
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Well no kidding! Current TV is the network founded by former Democratic Vice President Al Gore, later anchored by progressive hero-villain Keith Olbermann and recently featuring liberal former New York governor Eliot "I Do What I Want" Spitzer. This is the network that Glenn Beck, the far-right fanatic that was too extreme for even Fox News to handle, wanted to buy. It's entirely unclear how far negotiations between Beck and Current TV got, if anywhere beyond Current's executives laughing TheBlaze crew out of the room. And furthermore, who knows if Beck and company even had the money to throw down. Current TV's reported sale price of $500 million, minus a $100 million for Al Gore who owned 20 percent of the network, is well north of what AOL paid for The Huffington Post nearly two years ago. In other words, that's a lot money to pay for a fledgling independent media company.
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It probably wouldn't have worked out anyways. Current TV didn't have the viewership that, say, MSNBC enjoys, but it does reach 40 million homes. We're pretty sure that the 22,000 that tune in during primetime aren't looking for the news according to Glenn Beck.
