Al Jazeera English | Refresh 2020

Indeed the range of countries they cover and the quality of 95% of their output is far superior to the other main channels out there - in my mind they’re the closest thing these days to early 2000s BBC World.
Their weak point is very much covering their home patch of Qatar but other than that they’re excellent.

Though I think that's a recent thing, Qatar wasn't really news-worthy until the last few years

Indeed some of BBC World's personalities in the early 2000s are now working for Al Jazeera English like Martine Dennis, Darren Jordon, Adrian Finighan and Everton Fox (weather presenter)

Everton Fox.... the only person named after two types of mints

When it launched AJE was staffed by a lot of people from British TV in particular ITN, Sky, AP and to a lesser extent the BBC. There was a bit of an exodus in the mid 2000's when they were recruiting, a lot attracted by good financial incentives given for working in Doha

That was just the tip of the iceberg ! The station was full of ex BBC off screen staff too. If you sat in the station's cafe and closed your eyes, you could well have been in London W1 1AA (on a hot summers day !)

Also don't forget the original Aljazeera Arabic was full of the displaced ex-BBC Arabic (Original Recipe 1996 era) staff to boot, due to the station closing down.

Apparently, Richelle Carey has already returned to host the new season of UpFront from Washington, taking over from Mehdi Hasan who is now hosting his own show at Peacock TV.

https://network.aljazeera.net/pressroom/richelle-carey-host-next-season-upfront-al-jazeera
Press release dates to 20 October.

News Theme
https://youtu.be/_YGPHhPGHEw

Newshour theme
https://youtu.be/S04Tq845oC4

^ Utterly stunning! Great transparent renditions of both themes. Love them both.

Al Jazeera to launch rightwing media platform targeting US conservatives

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/feb/23/al-jazeera-rightwing-media-platform-conservatives-rightly

Darren Jordon was presenting the 13G Newshour today - very unusual as he usually only presents during the very early hours. Nice to see him . Though still a strange arrangement as Folly was presenting the 10G Newshour. Normally both slots are presented by the same person. Shame he's not utilised more...

In other news - Richelle Carey seems to have been dropped from UpFront. Marc Lamont Hill is now the main host.

I had no idea Darren Jordon still works for them! I am so surprised, I genuinely thought he had retired!