Current announced it will eliminate 80 jobs while shifting away from its trademark short-form video packages and "towards proven 30-60 minute formats" from more outside sources. This would mean less video production in Current's Bay Area home base, as reported previously by former Valleywagger Jackson West at NBC Bay Area.

Which means everything is totally awesome and on track, according to a Current press release:

This re-organization was not the result of a need to cut costs. Current Media will have its most profitable year. This financial stability will allow the company to re-allocate resources in order to put further emphasis on areas of the business believed to best position Current Media for continued long-term growth.

Financial stability leads to sad job layoffs glorious resource re-allocation, gotcha. More good news: Current journalists no longer have to travel all the way to North Korea to hear propagandist doublespeak!

UPDATE: Current COO Joanna Drake Earl said in an interview that the layoffs hit San Francisco and Los Angeles offices the hardest; and while the firings were not "driven by a need to cut costs," they will indeed result in a net reduction of costs.

She added that "It's always a very sad day to eliminate positions" but that the layoffs were "about being a good media company listening to our consumers... any media company in the business of show production is... watching the dial" in terms of results and adjusting as necessary.Indeed, it sometimes seems like Current is becoming more like the traditional media companies it was intended to serve as counterprogramming against, what with the outsourcing of production, devotion to "consumer" feedback (like ratings!) and layoff rounds.

But Earl said the company remains "very committed" to audience contributions, albeit in "different ways" than through collecting short-form videos, a format now dominated by YouTube and "somewhat confusing" to viewers anyway, according to Earl. Not all short shows have been eliminated; some, like Vanguard Journalism, have actually been lengthened.

So maybe Current TV can grow with its hippie, San Francisco soul intact. That's going to mean acting more like ruthless capitalist media barons. But it's probably the best hope for the remaining employees at the all-too-baffling (and all too obscure) cable network.

(Pic: Gore at a Current TV event last year. By Simone Brunozzi.)

Current is mulling layoffs at its San Francisco home base, a source tells former Valleywag contributor Jackson West at NBC Bay Area. The cuts would, in part, eliminate San Francisco-based video production jobs and either outsource them or relocate them to Los Angeles, where some San Francisco jobs also ended up following November layoffs of 60 Current staffers. Current hasn't aired as much cheap user-generated content as it first planned; instead that content, such as it is, has tended to flow to sites like YouTube. No one, Clinton included, has figured out how to save the network from that expensive conundrum.

(Pic: Steve Rhodes)

Gore, you see, is a prominent backer of Fisker's Fisker Automotive, which just last week got a $529 million government loan to build a hybrid sports car. Gore also is a partner at the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, another Fisker investor. The Department of Energy said the former vice president's involvement did not sway its decision, but his involvement with the company can't hurt the firm's credibility with investors in this down economy. Musk's electric car company Tesla, meanwhile, is backed by rival Valley firm Draper Fisher Jervetson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and is a media and celebrity darling. It got $465 million in government loans back in June.

Fisker once had an $800,000 contract with Tesla to design the Model S, the car central to the company's plan for profitability, and Tesla accused him in a lawsuit of stealing company secrets. Tesla also claimed Fisker did shoddy work, sabotaging their design and setting the company back three to six months, a delay that came during one of the company's darkest periods. Fisker won an arbitration ruling saying he did nothing wrong, but there's no reason to think that settled the grudge.

The government is now subsidizing both sides as they go head to head in the market for affordable electric-powered cars. Sure, one makes a plug-in hybrid and the other a pure electric, but the market for pricey, super-environmentally-friendly sedans is relatively small at this early stage. Not the best time to help the companies potentially undercut one another's profit margins. It would have been better to let Fisker get money from a government closer to where he'll be manufacturing the car, over in Finland.

After all, "I'm buying a Fisker!" probably doesn't sound nearly so dirty over in the European market.

The FTC, which polices antitrust violations along with the Department of Justice, is investigating Apple and Google for a potential violation of a 1914 law against overlapping boards which may hinder competition.

People in Silicon Valley have long wondered at the close ties between Apple and Google. When Google CEO Eric Schmidt joined Apple's board in 2006, Apple had yet to launch the iPhone and Google wasn't a player in the cell-phone market. But the depth of ties seemed curious, even without that conflict. Genentech CEO Art Levinson already served on both boards, and two Apple board members, Bill Campbell and Al Gore, served as Google advisors. That's a block of four directors — half the board, able to stalemate any Google-unfriendly strategic move.

It's an obvious thing to investigate. But why now, since it's been the case for years? Schmidt campaigned for Barack Obama, and was recently appointed as a science advisor to the president. Fat lot of good that's done him. This is the second antitrust case Google is facing, following one over a settlement with book publishers which critics say would limit competition in book search.

The Obama administration, despite its ties to Schmidt, has signaled that it will be more aggressive in antitrust enforcement (as Democratic administrations usually are). But what else do Google and Apple share, besides directors? A common enemy in Microsoft. And Microsoft has hired Burson-Marsteller, a PR and lobbying outfit which lists "position[ing] technology firms in antitrust cases" as one of its specialties. A Burson-Marsteller executive has denied lobbying against Google on Microsoft's behalf. So modest! At the same time, the firm, run by loathsome unterflack Mark Penn, went as far as to hire Eric Schmidt's ex-girlfriend to help out its tech practice. Revenge is a dish best served with a summons from the antitrust cops.

In late 2006, Gore's Current made an offer for Digg which valued the social-news startup at $100 milion or more. Wonder if Rose and Gore discussed business at all in this interview. As VentureBeat recently pointed out, Digg's traffic is flat, and it hasn't significantly increased its valuation since Rose and Gore's 2006 chat.

In many parts of Silicon Valley, it seems misguided to regard the U.S. economy as reliant solely on Wall Street. The future still depends on entrepreneurs and innovations — and green-tech businesses getting “traction.” Most of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers’s ventures are long-term investments. And entrepreneurs are still bringing new ideas through the door at a steady pace. “I don’t expect the credit crunch will change that,” said partner John Denniston.

Some of the firm’s fledging green ventures are evolutionary improvements on current technologies that will soon hit the market, like the electric Think car. Others promise to revolutionize various aspects of the energy economy — solar power or biofuels — much as Netscape or Google remade the Web, or Genentech ushered in the biotechnology era.

Kleiner was not the only venture firm that had suddenly seen the future and decided it was green. But Kleiner’s past success tends to legitimize the prospects of business ideas that in many cases have spent decades on the economic fringe.

The most challenging aspect of Kleiner’s endeavor is for green tech to expand into the markets more rapidly than any energy technology has done before. Academics sometimes call this process the diffusion of technology. Diffusion can go very fast, with personal computers or Facebook. But in the field of energy, new technologies have moved quite slowly into the mainstream. It has been 54 years since the silicon solar cell was invented in New Jersey at Bell Laboratories. A front-page article in the Times heralded the breakthrough – in 1954 — as something that promised to revolutionize the world.

John Doerr: “To get solutions at scale, we’re going to have to find answers that are economic for all people everywhere. We’ve got to use policy to harness innovation to make sure that the right thing to do is a profitable thing to do — so it becomes the probable thing to have happen.”

Al Gore believes when the governments of the world assign a price to carbon—within a year or two — demand for carbon-free electricity will explode.

Partner Randy Komisar says the energy market is large and outdated: “I’m not very good at hitting the bull’s-eye. I need a big target. And this is the biggest target I’ve ever seen in my life.”

(Photo by Ausra)

Malik and Cashmore, perhaps taking a cue, didn't do any real reporting on the event, leaving that to Threat Level and Laughing Squid. The two simply blogged their Al-and-me pictures as news stories on GigaOm and Mashable, bringing themselves one step closer to the old media stereotype of the vain reporter who can't stop inserting himself into the story — or in this case, into the non-story.

After giving a short speech to attendees, in which he praised their efforts to break the "feudal" system of network television, Gore promised "By tomorrow, I'll be on Twitter." Then he left. Come on, Al. How hard would it have been to sign up for Twitter on the spot, then stick around for a few minutes to lob an inconvenient truth or two across John McCain's puss during the opening leg of the debate? Instead, here's the message Gore sent: Twitter is for kids. (Video by Laughing Squid/Scott Beale)

My counterpoint is that it’s hard to criticize a guy who’s made millions of dollars on a company like eBay and then goes spending it on technology development and integration that will promote the alternative energy economy, no? We’re talking about an industry that simultaneously improves our economy and national security while lowering greenhouse gas emissions and water usage from power generation. The fact is that there are many solar installers out there of questionable skill level. Westly invests in and promotes Akeena because he knows we’re one of the best, and people will be well taken care of when purchasing from us.

At some point, it’s not worth criticizing and we should applaud people for their efforts. If your mom makes you a sandwich for lunch, are you going to get mad at her for not telling you what’s in it?

For starters, if Westly was so eager to promote Akeena to people who presumably trust his judgement (like campaign contributors), one would think that his willingness to invest in the company would be a point of pride. But according to Belliveau's logic, the alternative energy industry is good, investors and proponents of said industry are well-intentioned, and all of it is therefore above criticism.

This sentiment is not unique to Belliveau — and the argument sounds like something you'd hear from a recently born-again Christian willing to eschew reason in favor of the pious faith that their own decisions, and the judgment of church leaders, is beyond reproach because they are blessed by God.

Which doesn't surprise me, as I've long argued that the style of rhetoric employed by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth borrowed heavily from the genre of end-times sermons which he surely studied in his time at Vanderbilt's Divinity School and probably heard growing up in Tennessee.

It's this uncritical perspective that feeds the greenwashing publicity machine that allows companies like Exxon to reap windfall oil profits on the one hand while painting itself as an environmental crusader on the other. Or Google to garner praise for its plug-in hybrid program and electric car investments while the CEO and founders jet around the globe in not one but two private planes which measure fuel consumption in gallons per minute.

So three cheers for Westly as champion for the environment, but let's be honest — he's a typical Valley entrepreneur who sees an opportunity to make money and lots of it, just as Al Gore promised to the faithful in his own self-interested way.

So are we supposed to throw out commonsense ethics in the name of Mother Earth? Just because Mom packed you a baloney sandwich doesn't mean you have to eat it.

When President John F. Kennedy challenged our nation to land a man on the moon and bring him back safely in 10 years, many people doubted we could accomplish that goal. But 8 years and 2 months later, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon.

Is Gore just a wild-eyed optimist with a compelling end-of-days sermon who truly believes with enough of our Yankee moxie and knowhow we can accomplish this lofty goal? Maybe. But he's more Joseph P. Kennedy than JFK. More likely, he just realizes that if Kleiner Perkins's investments in cleantech don't pay off in 10 years, he and buddy John Doerr won't be able to threaten, "One of these days, to the moon!"

Several Valley investors who monitor startups tell me they don't bother sending Web-oriented entrepreneurs to pitch Kleiner anymore; they say the firm just doesn't seem interested.

Why would these gamblers leave the table where just a few years ago they were winning big?

For starters, broadband penetration in the developed world has nearly reached the saturation point, meaning that new Web services are increasingly competing for share in a market of fixed size. Sure, bandwidth demands are increasing because the media and tools being developed are getting richer, but those are ultimately incremental plays, and barrier to entry is much, much higher than it was for Google. The fact that there hasn't been a significant Web IPO since Google, or another acquisition the size of YouTube, tends to make me think less that Kleiner Perkins has lost its touch and more that they've smartly shifted focus to areas where big dollars make a difference.

The market that is growing worldwide is mobile, because mobile devices are less expensive than traditional computers and deploying wireless data networks is much cheaper than building out fixed-line access. Hence, in developing markets in Asia, South America and even Africa, there's a hunger for killer apps besides voice and text that will fit into your pocket — hence the $100 million iFund. Even if the money is nominally for development of iPhone applications, there's no reason to think that a good product and business model for that device can't be translated for devices running Palm, Windows and Google's Android as well.

But the key lies in John Doerr's missionary zeal for cleantech. In An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore (now a KP partner) wrote the following about global warming:

What are the opportunities such a crisis also offers? They include not just new jobs and new profits, though there will be plenty of both. We can build clean engines; we can harness the sun and the wind; we can stop wasting energy; we can use our planet's plentiful coal resources without heating the planet.

The fact is, no matter how big Crpstr.com gets, the upside falls short of the profit potential in energy and transportation by at least three or four orders of magnitude. As Lashinsky points out, the size of the energy market is $4 trillion.

It's important to remember that long before California was where you went to start your social networking startup, the primary industries driving the economy were mining, oil and defense, roughly in that chronological order. Transportation and communications technology merely allowed capitalists in the state and beyond to extend their reach in these fields around the world without leaving the comfort of their Atherton or Upper East Side home.

Telling are both KP's investment in oil exploration firm Terralliance and Gore's cheerleading for clean coal technology. While finding new and better ways to arrange for some nookie with your iPhone while wandering up and down Valencia may seem like a good investment to horny geeks, KP is looking beyond placing small bets at Faro and looking to buy the table — because the house always wins, and in global capitalism, the energy market is the house. (Photo by AP/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

When it comes to selling Digg, it seems Rose is the one who can't seal the deal and is left pining for what might have been. Rose on Diller:

He is so well connected. He basically walked into the room with this amazing, badass suit on and just sat down and was like, 'Oh, Digg. Yeah. Love it.'

Look for Digg's acquisition abstinence to end soon, with Google's Marissa Mayer — infamously known to be looking for "random play" — as the one to pop Digg and Rose's sellout cherry.

Previously:

• A is for Adelson, who cofounded Digg
• 
  
• B is for Botha, who sold YouTube big
• 
  
• F is for Fitzpatrick, and "hookers and blow"
•