Former US vice president Al Gore has been honored at last night’s annual Emmy Awards ceremony for his effort to launch and help develop Current TV, a youth-oriented cable network.

Just six months after his documentary about global warming "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Academy Award, the politician received the "interactive television services" Emmy, a noncompetitive prize picked by a panel of the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

"We are trying to open up the television medium so that viewers can help them make television and join the conversation of democracy and reclaim American democracy by talking about the choices we have to make," Gore said as he and his business partner Joel Hyatt accepted their awards.

The network which airs a mix of professionally produced segments and viewer-produced videos from a few seconds to 15 minutes is up against established brands like YouTube, MySpace and Facebook and reaches up to 40 million homes in the United States. It’s the only 24/7 cable and satellite television network produced and programmed for and by its audience.

"There is a room and a place for everything. YouTube is a place for people to put up films of their pet cat or their Aunt Tilly's 90th birthday party. And there is a place for that, and that is fine. It is not what we set out to do. We set out to be the high-quality provider of user-generated content or really passionate storytellers with a point of view that they want to share with their generational cohorts," Hyatt was quoted by Variety as saying.