MEDIA - U.S. Current TV Purchase By Al-Jazeera

AJE - Al Jazeera English

"What Al Jazeera's Current TV Acquisition Means for American Media" PBS Newshour 1/3/2013

Excerpt

RAY SUAREZ (Newshour): The Pan-Arab news channel Al-Jazeera has long wanted to boost its reach in the U.S. beyond a few large metropolitan areas.

With its purchase of Current, Al-Jazeera has expanded its potential audience nearly nine-fold to about 40 million homes.

Current was co-founded in 2005 by former Vice President Al Gore. The channel confirmed the sale in a statement yesterday, saying:

"Al-Jazeera shares Current TV's mission to give voice to those who are not typically heard, to speak truth to power, to provide independent and diverse points of view."

Al-Jazeera plans to transform Current into a new network called Al-JazeeraAmerica. It will add between five and 10 new bureaus in the U.S. beyond the five it currently operates.

Al-Jazeera has struggled to increased U.S. viewership from its earliest days. Cable and satellite companies have been reluctant to carry Al-Jazeera.

The English and Arabic-language networks are owned by the government of the small Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar. It signed on from the capital, Doha, in 1996.

Al-Jazeera's Arabic network gained worldwide attention after American and allied troops invaded Afghanistan, when it was the only channel to cover the war live. Al-Jazeera English launched in 2006. It has a different staff and budget from the Arabic network.

But both are overseen by a member of Qatar's royal family. And both actively covered the Arab spring, which helped the English-language channel win a prestigious Peabody Award to add to a number of other high-profile journalistic laurels it was awarded last year. There are already signs of trouble for the new American channel.

Yesterday, the nation's second largest cable TV operator, Time Warner, dropped Current as soon as the Current-Al-Jazeera deal was confirmed.

For its part, Current TV tried to make its mark promoting user-generated content from the public. But it's recently evolved into a more conventional talk format with a liberal leaning. Its ratings have been very small.

According to the Nielsen ratings company, 42,000 people watched Current programming on a typical night in 2012. The network is expected to post $114 million in revenue this year.

COMMENT: While Al Jazeera is owned by a friendly Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar I wonder IF they are really fair in their news presentations. I have watched (online) some Al Jazeera news, and CNN and other U.S. networks present pieces from Al Jazeera, I have not viewed enough to make a judgement at to their fairness.