...but where's Kathy Kronenberger?

For you lucky folks whose high schools whored themselves out for free A/V equipment, you may have fond memories of Channel One, the controversial 12-minute news show that beamed a jarring mix of hard hitting news, Skittles commercials, and Army recruiting spots to captive students nationwide. While Channel One is still going strong, I watched back when a brown-haired Anderson Cooper filed reports in a puffy orange vest from Bosnia and Lisa Ling was interviewing members of Toni! Tony! Tone!. It's fun to see the likes of Cooper, Ling, as well as Maria Menounos, Kris Osborn and Serena Altschul, move on to bigger and better things. Anderson as the 21st century Walter Cronkite....who would've thunk?

For those of you in my demo who are curious to see whatever became of the other less successful anchors, look no further than Al Gore's nascent Gen-Y news station Current TV, which itself is a weird hybrid of Channel One and video podcasts, complete with a progress bar for viewers with even shorter attention spans than I have. Old-school Channel One anchors Justin Gunn, Rawley Valverde, and Gotham Chopra are hosts, and they even gave a job to Lisa Ling's sister!

Watching Current TV, I can almost taste the rainbow once more.