Al Jazeera English from The Shard

The original "follow the sun" programming strategy was so cool. The KL and DC broadcasts were really good hours of news that covered regional news well in a larger, global frame. I loved watching Shihab Rattansi, Ghida Fakhry, and Kimberly Halkett in the nightly DC broadcast. Veronica Pedrosa was great from KL.

KL's live daily broadcasts were cut back first starting around 2010. I believe they still have a bureau there, but it's not in the Petronas Towers anymore. DC was cut back not too long after that. Riz Khan's show wasn't renewed but was replaced with The Stream, which originally came from the Newseum. They started up a North American version of Inside Story ahead of the 2012 election and used it in the former Riz Khan space. The Stream eventually moved into the former newscast space in the DC bureau at some point before AJAM's "America Tonight" launched.



Internally, yes, but the external broadcast was 14:9 SD. They also weren't 24 hours from the start either.

Practical things like getting camera crews and their equipment up and down 60 floors, no where to put satellite dishes, and also technical things like resilient paths for circuits.


There was also the thing that there was little point being in the building. As has been seen with their studio in The Shard one of the main assets is the view. In KL the only big landmark was the building they were in and you can't see anything else from 60 floors up.


It was produced in HD, but had no HD outlets.

London output may be affected today by a 24 hour strike. Output from Qatar isn't affected.

Strike is off as they've come to an agreement

Breaking News:

.@bectu .@nujofficial made
significant progress with Al Jazeera at Acas (4th May).

As a result, the NUJ and BECTU have suspended strike action @ajenglish planned for Wednesday 9th May. Members meeting Tuesday 8th May.

— Gerry Carr (@Gerry54Gerry) May 7, 2018

BECTU & NUJ members at Al Jazeera welcomed ACAS breakthrough and agreed that the pay offer should be put to consultative ballots.
2018: Consolidated pay increase of 6% backdated to 1st January 2018
2019: Consolidated pay increase of 3% as of 1stJanuary 2019.

— Al Jazeera NUJ (@aljazeera_NUJ) May 8, 2018

Al Jazeera dropping an hour of news this evening to reflect on it being a year since the blockade of Qatar - complete with overly solemn music, special black graphics and a rather melodramatic opening by the normally brilliant Kamahl Santamaria.

Al Jazeera English is most of the time an absolutely brilliant channel where you get a comprehensive, informative look at stories from around the world but its blind spot is definetely its home nation - it's not hard to tell it's Qatari-owned.

But then wouldn't you expect it's rivals like BBC World or CNN to do a programme marking the anniversary of a major news story in their respective home countries too?

The irony of this is that while AJE is an otherwise excellent channel, it'll never be objective towards Qatar, so for them to do an RT style hour of puff isn't surprising.

The very fine Jane Dutton is leaving AJE and returning to South African broadcasting.

Yep, she's moving to eNCA.

[PRESS RELEASE] International news personality @janedutton will be joining eNCA’s new night-time line up from 16 July 2018! Great to have you joining the team... pic.twitter.com/ndymEWYHMN

— eNCA (@eNCA) June 21, 2018

I wonder why the output from London has been cut for the last week or so. After Newsgrid, one London bulletin airs at 5 pm BST , then Doha, Newshour from Doha and then London for the last four hours of the London block, if you can call it that.

The hours were extended to give Doha more downtime to do some upgrade work. Maybe that's now finished?

I'm confused. Do you mean there's upgrade work at London?