After spurning Glenn Beck's advances, Al Gore and his partners sold Current TV to Al Jazeera, giving the Qatar-based network a long-sought foothold in the American television market. Alex Weprin explains the logic of the purchase:
Al Jazeera acquired Current primarily for its U.S. distribution, which had been at 60 million homes. After Time Warner Cable dropped the network, the carriage dropped to around 40 million. Smaller, but still an enormous starting point for a new cable channel. … Al Jazeera’s new network could also potentially take advantage of a recent FCC ruling. Bloomberg TV argued that Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, had to “neighborhood” all news channels together. So, in theory, Al Jazeera could argue that Comcast (which carries Current) has to place it next to outlets like CNN and Fox News.
Sean O'Neal thinks the predictable outcries of "Terrorist TV" miss the larger picture:
[S]uch sniping ignores the fact that Al Jazeera has long been lauded by newshounds and lawmakers alike for its impressive investigation of international affairs, that its perceived "anti-American bias" is based primarily on secondhand xenophobia handed down from alarmist pundits to the ignorant who have never even watched it, and that its English-language channel is staffed with the same, pleasantly blonde reporters that Americans prefer to see reading their news.
Sixty percent of the new channel's content will be produced here in the US, while the rest will come from sister-network Al Jazeera English. Rory O'Connor points out that Al Jazeera has the financial backbone to take on America's cable news trio:
Political concerns aside, some media observers have questioned whether Al Jazeera has, as [Brian] Stelter phrased it, "The journalistic muscle and the money to compete head-to-head with CNN and other news channels in the United States." What a joke! The last time I checked, Sheikj Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the ruler of Qatar, had more money than Allah.
Michael Wolff pans the move, noting only that the channel's cable contracts could disappear and arguing that the network will be just as boring as Current TV was:
There are probably many reasons that al-Jazeera in English is not very good. It doesn't really seem to have a clear idea of who its audience is. It has often relied on old-time, marginal or unhappy mainstream broadcasters in an effort to gain some legitimacy and recognition. The heavy hand of state ownership is probably not only heavy, but given the particularly internecine politics of Qatar and its ever-expanding commercial and political interests, unfathomable. And, in general, al-Jazeera clearly does not place much of a premium on wit or style.
The Dish 