Al Jazeera English & Al Jazeera America

Al Jazeera is now on Virgin Media: English on 622 and Arabic on 836

Some US News ....

AJ is to take over Current TV (Al Gore's venture), AJ replacing Current from April in most US packages.

oooh that is interesting. Did they have wide carriage on US cable beforehand or was there still a lot of "Al Jazeera sounds like Al Qaeda" mentality about?

Likely to be "Al Jazeera America" apparently, with "roughly 60 percent of the programming will be produced in the United States while the remaining 40 percent will come from Al Jazeera English".

Link

Oh really? It'll be very interesting to see this one play out then - who they'll likely end up poaching.

It will also be interesting to see just how much Fox News will inevitably attack them.

Didn't Current TV used to be a News channel before Al Gore bought it up anyway?

To an extent, yes. Most of Newsworld International relied on CBC's news channel, but they also aired a lot of NHK, DW-TV, and apparently even ITV.

I was a big fan of the original Current, which for the most part showed 3-7 minute videos all day. I really enjoyed the mix of smart short-form documentaries, news pieces, and cultural analysis. But they weren't making money doing that, and since then, it's had an identity crisis and as of late is trying to out-MSNBC MSNBC.

This is fantastic news. I already get Current on my cable lineup, and I've always wanted Al Jazeera to have a bigger presence in the American market. I suppose having an American-based subsidiary channel is likely a good way to go.

I think it's still quite patchy, limited to a few local cable networks, digital side channels and time sharing on 'international' channels: http://www.aljazeera.com/watchaje/20091022172112636517.html

Of course if it does end up buying and rebranding Current it doesn't mean that 'Al Jazeera America' would remain on Current's slots. I wonder if any platforms would ditch it?


That sounds a bit like what they've done with their channel in the Balkans, there they show local in peak and AJE overnight, though AJAmerica wouldn't have the language issue. I wonder if that's the way they're going - localised channels?

Among the assets Al Jazeera is buying from Current: its carriage deals w/ DirecTV, Comcast, Dish, Verizon, AT&T. But NOT Time Warner Cable.


from ……..

BRIANSTELTER on TWITTER.COM
02-Jan-2013 @ 23:58

More here including copy of memo sent to Current staff:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffbercovici/2013/01/02/current-tv-near-sale-to-al-jazeera-likely-500-million-deal-for-al-gore-and-co/

This is all very interesting ... can't wait for the launch of this channel. It seems Al Jazeera are going down the route of regional services - maybe a European one eventually?

Reports also say that they may not put up a online stream for Al Jazeera America, and may geo-block US while broadcasting Al Jazeera English (during the transition period), wouldn't they alienate their intended audience?