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SCOTT JAGOW: Today, the cable network, Discovery, will tell us about a new channel its launching next year. It’s all about living green, you know, caring for the environment. Ashley Milne-Tyte has more.

ASHLEY MILNE-TYTE: In an era of home and garden television and the popularity of films like An Inconvenient Truth, perhaps it’s no surprise that eco-friendly TV is on the horizon.

ROBERT THOMPSON: We could have seen this coming from a glacier away.

That’s Robert Thompson, a professor of television and pop culture at Syracuse University. He says Discovery is taking a risk in re-branding their current Discovery Home channel into the new, eco-friendly one, but they’re betting on the current zeitgeist.

THOMPSON: I think the idea is they’ve decided this is something that’s probably got legs and you know, eco-friendly, when you think about that, that can take a pretty wide set of definitions.

So there’ll be no shortage of program ideas.

But new channels need advertisers. Thompson says this one has a good chance of attracting them. Especially, he says, given the glow some advertisers will feel through being associated with anything green.

In New York, I’m Ashley Milne-Tyte for Marketplace.