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Isn't Rupert Murdoch, through News Corp - the parent company of Fox News - buying DirecTV? How long will Murdoch keep this trash on his system? He could bury Algore and the rest of the "investors" with the stroke of the pen.

I believe most carriage contracts also give the cable companies the right to cancel their contracts with a given channel if the network's format is so radically changed that it no longer bears any resemblance to the original channel. (For example, if the Discovery Channel were to suddenly turn itself into an MTV clone.) NBC had to do a lot of ruffled-feather smoothing with a lot of cable companies back in 1996 when they suddenly decided to kill America's Talking and use the channel slots to launch MSNBC. At the time, NBC brought up the possibility of legal action, arguing that a switch from talk radio with pictures to a news channel wasn't actually "radical" enough to allow cable companies to invoke that provision in their contracts, but if I recall correctly, in the end they just made a few little side deals to sweeting the financial pot and prevent the truly angry cablecos from yanking the channel.

I doubt Murdoch would yank GoreTV, though. It would make him personally look too biased, and besides, he's got the channel space. If he can make money from an extra few thousand people so wildly indoctrinated that they'd want to watch GoreTV 24/7, why not?