Current TV Considers Putting Itself Up for Sale

Current TV, a low-rated cable channel that recently reinvented itself with a lineup of political talk shows, is considering selling itself, the channel's chief executive, Joel Hyatt, said on Friday.

A sale could be an out for Mr. Hyatt and Al Gore, who bought the small cable news channel Newsworld International in 2004 and turned it into Current TV a year later. They could opt instead for a strategic partnership with a major media company or for a new round of venture capital financing. Mr. Hyatt declined an interview request on Friday.

What may entice buyers isn't Current's built-in audience, but the real estate: it is one of the few channels with a big footprint (it's available in about 60 million homes in the United States) but without a big media owner. The channel's stakeholders, along with Mr. Hyatt and Mr. Gore, include Comcast, Direct TV and several venture capital firms.

Mr. Hyatt said in a statement, “Current has been approached many times by media companies interested in acquiring our company. This year alone, we have had three inquiries. As a consequence, we thought it might be useful to engage expertise to help us evaluate our strategic options.”

Mr. Hyatt's comments were first reported by The New York Post. Later, Reuters reported that JP Morgan Chase and the Raine Group had been hired to assess the channel's options. In 2008, Current filed for a $100 million initial public stock offering but scrapped the plan a year later.

Originally programmed with short-form videos submitted by viewers, the channel changed direction in 2011 by hiring the MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann and by adding a number of like-minded liberal news shows. The ratings have ticked up a bit since then, but not in a way that makes Current a rival of MSNBC or CNN.

This year Current fired Mr. Olbermann, and he sued the company, accusing it of breach of contract; the lawsuit is pending. The channel replaced him with Eliot Spi tzer. The other nightly hosts are Joy Behar, Cenk Uygur and Jennifer Granholm. Mr. Gore has hosted special election coverage this year, most recently during the presidential debates.