Aljazeera America is shutting down April 30

HLN is in that but not AJAM or Bloomberg???

HLN is in that but not AJAM or Bloomberg???

Is it clear if AJAM will surrender their carriage contracts, or are they just shuttering the US operation and planning to use their existing carriage deals to carry AJE instead?

It sounded like they were shuttering the operation but will focus on digital content.

That doesn't answer my question re: continuing carriage? i.e. Are Al Jazeera pulling out entirely from English language US broadcast distribution, or are they going to just rebroadcast AJE so continuing with a broadcast outlet in English, just closing the US-based AJAM operation that used to opt-out of it?

That doesn't answer my question re: continuing carriage? i.e. Are Al Jazeera pulling out entirely from English language US broadcast distribution, or are they going to just rebroadcast AJE so continuing with a broadcast outlet in English, just closing the US-based AJAM operation that used to opt-out of it?

From what I've read so far it seems like they're completely shutting down. To be honest AJE probably wouldn't do much better either.

Perhaps, but the cost of simply distributing AJE would be minimal by comparison.

And yet, Al Jazeera America launched based on the assumption that America's revealed preferences were not, in fact, its preferences. Is it any wonder it failed?

Was there any actual evidence, aside from surveys or focus group data, that suggested somebody might watch Al Jazeera America? During the height of the Arab Spring, Al Jazeera’s English-language website became a go-to source of coverage for many Americans. In 2013, Al Shihabi told Marketplace that 40 percent of Al Jazeera English’s streaming traffic came from the United States. Surely that was a sign that some of those online viewers would tune in to the network, right? Well, no. Web audiences aren't the same as cable TV viewers. They're younger. They often dislike TV, or dislike paying for it anyway. If anything, those streaming figures were a sign that Al Jazeera English had a bright future as a destination for U.S. Internet users. Which is why it makes sense that, as it is shuttering Al Jazeera America, Al Jazeera Media says its going to focus more effort online. That's where its attention should have been all along.

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.