Al Jazeera America to shut down

Al Jazeera America to shut down

Roger Yu, USA TODAY
minutes ago

Al Jazeera America's digital journalists want collective bargaining.
Al Jazeera America, the American cable news outlet owned by Qatar-based Al Jazeera, plans to shut down less than three years after its much-ballyhooed launch, unable to overcome low ratings, operational problems and a lack of advertisers.

The cable news network will be phased out by April 30, according to a memo that was e-mailed to staffers Wednesday.
Al Jazeera Media Network, which is funded by the government of Qatar, launched the U.S.-based network in August, 2013 after buying Current TV, the cable news channel co-founded by Al Gore, for about $500 million earlier in the year.
Al Jazeera Media Networks announces that Al Jazeera America will shut down on April 30th.

— Ali Velshi (@AliVelshi) January 13, 2016
"The wind down of Al Jazeera America is not expected to have any impact on other businesses or operations of the network," wrote Mostefa Souag, acting director general of Al Jazeera Media Network, in the note.
Al Jazeera Media Network plans to expand its "international digital services to broaden its multi-platform presence in the United States," Souag wrote.
BREAKING NEWS: Al Jazeera America @AJAM to shut down in April. A stunning end to an upstart cable news network.

— rolandsmartin (@rolandsmartin) January 13, 2016
As Al Jazeera prepared to launch in 2013, it hired several well-known journalists --  Ali Velshi, Joie Chen and Mike Viqueira, to name a few - and touted its deep pockets that would sustain the operations despite sluggish ratings that were initially expected. AJAM, as the U.S. operation came to be known, promised to spend money for investigative and fact-based journalism to distinguish itself from more entrenched competitors.
While Al Jazeera's fans hoped that its international origin and focus will broaden AJAM's coverage of the Middle East and foreign affairs, AJAM sought to focus on domestic news in hopes of expanding its influence in the U.S. But critics were vocal from day one, lambasting Al Jazeera for buying its way into the U.S. to spread what they say is its anti-Western and anti-Semitic bias. Al Jazeera officials have denied consistently that the company was anti-Western, saying that viewers would change their minds once they give the upstart operation a fair shot.
Some cable distributors initially refused to carry the network after Current TV's operation was overhauled for AJAM. After lawsuits, AJAM expanded its reach to about 55 million homes in the U.S. But its ratings failed to grow. AJAM never disclosed ratings data, but industry analysts speculated that it never broke five digits.

You mean TNN (Terrorist News Network) is going out of business?

http://theintercept.com/2016/01/13/al-jazeera-america-terminates-all-tv-and-digital-operations/

Al Jazeera America Terminates All TV and Digital Operations


Executives of Al Jazeera America (AJAM) held a meeting at 2 p.m. Eastern Time to tell their employees that the company is terminating all news and digital operations in the U.S. as of April 2016, resulting in the loss of hundreds of jobs. The announcement marks a stunning and rapid collapse of what, from the start, has been a towering failure.

AJAM began when Al Jazeera purchased Current TV in late 2012 from founder Al Gore for $500 million, and the channel launched six months later. From the start, the project was beset with massive failures, from bitter internal strife and employee discrimination lawsuits to minuscule ratings and distribution failures. AJAM and Gore ended up in a protracted, embittered lawsuit with one another. Ratings were so low as to be almost unquantifiable; even by 2015, the network was averaging a tiny 30,000 viewers in prime-time and at some points had literally a zero rating in the key 25-54 demographic.

From the start, employees complained vociferously that network executives were paralyzed by fear, believing they had to avoid all hints of bias and opinion in order to steer clear of what these executives regarded as the lethal stench of the Al Jazeera brand for American audiences. This turned much of the network into a diluted, extra-fearful version of CNN, which itself has suffered from remarkably low ratings for years. AJAM journalists typically blame one AJAM executive in particular, Ehab Al Shihabi, its executive director of international operations. Al Shihabi, whose background is in business and not journalism, was widely regarded as the prime author of the network’s identity problems and obsession with voiceless content.

A 2013 column in the Toronto Star by former Al Jazeera English chief Tony Burman warned that “the Al Jazeera America project has the odor of potential disaster.” Burman cited a New York Times article that began: “While it has a foreign name, the forthcoming Al Jazeera cable channel in the United States wants to be American through and through.” A NYT article from May on the “turmoil” plaguing the network pronounced that “the station has been a nonfactor in news.” Rather than fill a market gap for strong-voiced journalism with a focus on domestic counter-terrorism policy and the Middle East, AJAM opted for the much safer – and ultimately futile – strategy of trying to be an inoffensive, generic cable news network.

AJAM has been losing staggering sums of money from the start. That has become increasingly untenable as the network’s owner and funder, the government of Qatar, is now economically struggling due to low oil prices. The decision was made recently to terminate AJAM, which allows the network to terminate all of its cumbersome distribution contracts with cable companies, and re-launch its successful Al Jazeera English inside the U.S.

While AJAM has struggled with its television programming, its online reporting and digital opinion sites have been successful, finding relatively large audiences among American news consumers. Nonetheless, all of AJAM is terminating, and both the TV and digital employees are expected to lose their jobs.

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No need for Al Jazeera when you have CNN. My family is always stunned when we travel overseas and watch CNN International, which consists largely of anti-American propaganda.

Hence ..all the CNN, BBC & MSNBC jokes.. Posted out here. His network started with CNN.

CNN & BCC & MSNBC are affiliates & just PC opinion & NOT what Americans REALLY think.