# Al Jazeera America to Shut Down by April



## nmetro (Jul 11, 2006)

According to The New York Times; it will go dark by April, 30th.

The cable news channel Al Jazeera America, which debuted in 2013 to great fanfare when it promised to cover American news soberly and seriously, is shutting down by the end of April. The move was announced at a companywide meeting on Wednesday.

More here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/business/media/al-jazeera-america-to-shut-down-in-april.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news


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## nmetro (Jul 11, 2006)

Sorry to see this go, despite some of its recent problems. Its newscasts were certainly superior to those found found on CNN, HN, MSNBC, and FOX News.


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## mitchflorida (May 18, 2009)

Maybe that is why it only had 10,000 viewers. It was so good no one would watch it.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Al Jazeera America to close down

Al Jazeera America will shutter its cable TV and digital operations by April 30 of this year, the company announced Wednesday. The decision by the AJAM board was "driven by the fact that our business model is simply not sustainable in light of the economic challenges in the U.S. media marketplace", said AJAM CEO Al Anstey.
"I know the closure of AJAM will be a massive disappointment for everyone here who has worked tirelessly for our long-term future," Anstey wrote in an email addressed to all of the company's employees. The decision was no reflection on the work of that staff, he said. "Our commitment to great journalism is unrivaled. We have increasingly set ourselves apart from all the rest. And you are the most talented team any organization could wish for."
The announcement of AJAM's closure coincides with a decision by its global parent company to commit to a significant expansion of its worldwide digital operations into the U.S. market.

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2016/1/13/al-jazeera-america-to-close-down.html


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

A few nights ago, I watched a feature length interview on Al Jazeera America by Ray Suarez, formerly of PBS, on the future of cable TV. If not for the logo in the corner, you couldn't have known it wasn't a PBS segment.

America doesn't want news. It wants entertainment of one sort or another. News is boring, Where I am, in Washington, DC I can watch NHK/Japan and France 24 but I never do, because they are dull. Concise, reliable, and dull.

We had Al Jazeera English on broadcast television here before it was discontinued to support the cable TV deal, and its coverage of the Arab Spring uprising in Egypt was nothing short of sensational. I left my TV on overnight to catch the breaking developments whenever I awoke.

Al Jazeera America went the, "Americanization" route, and hired a lot of fired domestic televisions reporters, but in fairness to them, the novelty of Arab uprisings wore off and our interest in them subsided. I expect Al Jazeera English, which can be found on the web, to replace Al Jazeera America in its few viable markets here.


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## camo (Apr 15, 2010)

I doubt many will miss them, it struggled to reach 30,000 viewers on prime time coverage. You get better viewership on local medium market news stations.


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## bjdotson (Feb 20, 2007)

camo said:


> I doubt many will miss them, it struggled to reach 30,000 viewers on prime time coverage. You get better viewership on local medium market news stations.


Looked forward to watching them; excited by their promise of unbiased news. Watched them and enjoyed the mix of American and foreign news. Then they started showing slanted news (showing just one side of an issue and ignoring the other side) like all the others. I stopped watching and never went back


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## mwdxer (Oct 30, 2013)

I love Dish, but they have not added a lot of International news channels in English that I have wanted. With the Roku, most of them stream 24/7. Dish could replace AJZ America with Israel's English news channel. The only other two in the ME are Press TV (Iran), and Saudi Arabia News, but I doubt either one of those would go over well. But there are many English International news channels, BBC World, France 24, DWTV (Germany), NHK (Japan), CBC, etc. I think there is still an AJZ English news channel out there serving Europe. It may be on the Roku.


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## WestDC (Feb 9, 2008)

Good-BYE!- One channel Down 150 un watched more to go


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

WestDC said:


> Good-BYE!- One channel Down 150 un watched more to go


Unless you only watch channels like ESPN, TNT, USA, TBS, TLC, AMC, FX, Nick, MTV and Disney, chances are some of your favorites are in that list of 150 so called "un watched" channels if it was based on ratings alone and not just your personal tastes...


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## camo (Apr 15, 2010)

This channel had no business wasting HD bandwidth. Averaged 10,000 viewers and wasn't a neutral news organization contrary to what some say. It was just as biased as the rest and had the same issues of not reporting the truth.


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## WestDC (Feb 9, 2008)

KyL416 said:


> Unless you only watch channels like ESPN, TNT, USA, TBS, TLC, AMC, FX, Nick, MTV and Disney, chances are some of your favorites are in that list of 150 so called "un watched" channels if it was based on ratings alone and not just your personal tastes...


No those can go  As well


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## lacubs (Sep 12, 2010)

maybe Peyton Manning scare them into Shutting Down


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

camo said:


> This channel had no business wasting HD bandwidth.


Not carrying Al Jazeera America in HD wouldn't have meant DirecTV and/or Dish would have carried something else in HD instead. DirecTV would just have another HD Cinema placeholder until the contract for something else came up for renewal, and with all the recent moves, DirecTV has more than enough space for new HD channels as their contracts come up for renewal.

If it's like what happened in the past with other shutdowns (i.e. Universal Sports), nothing will replace it on either provider. If someone else buys Al Jazeera America or Al Jazeera uses the slot to reintroudce Al Jazeera English to the US market, depending on the wording of the contract, providers will either carry that channel instead or drop it entirely if their contract had a format/content/ownership clause.



camo said:


> Averaged 10,000 viewers


Last year Verizon FiOS used the low viewership as an excuse to drop some of the channels you have mentioned in the anticipation threads. You didn't care about this channel, but you might not feel the same if next time it were one of those channels...


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## tommiet (Dec 29, 2005)

Another channel I never watched.... Still waiting for ala carte.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

tommiet said:


> Still waiting for ala carte.


Be careful what you wish for, unless you watch the highest rated shows on TV, those channels you want would either change their formats to appeal to wider audience, jack up their rates since they can no longer be subsidized by a more popular sister channel you have to get first (along with lost ad revenue because of less subscribers), or cease to exist.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

tommiet said:


> Another channel I never watched.... Still waiting for ala carte.


This was one of those channels that people either loved or hated ... if they knew it existed.
Based on the viewership numbers the biggest problem was knowing it existed.


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## cmasia (Sep 18, 2007)

Is it possible beIN Sport 2 is on the horizon?


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## mrro82 (Sep 12, 2012)

That's a bummer. I wonder if another news channel will replace it?


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## Willh (Jan 1, 2009)

i can see Dish which launched a HD version of AJA replace it with a channel that truly needs a HD feed and is one of the most watch channels that is only in SD on Dish. so in a way, Dish wasted HD slot for this channel.


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

James Long said:


> Based on the viewership numbers the biggest problem was knowing it existed.


Based on the viewership numbers the biggest problem was the name of it.

.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

SayWhat? said:


> Based on the viewership numbers the biggest problem was the name of it.


It might have done better with the word NEWS in the channel. I believe "America's News Channel" would have been a better name (if available). The guide location on DISH and DIRECTV suggested news, but the channel could have been one of the other "___ America" channels (BBC, WGN). Sure, people biased against Al Jazerra as a name refused to tune in, but "News" in the title might have attracted people looking for news.


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

^^^ All you have to do is review some of the posts on this board when the channel first appeared to see the bias they faced. And even some of the posts in this thread.


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## mws192 (Jun 17, 2010)

"One America News Network (OAN) parent Herring Networks is exploring buying the shuttering Al Jazeera America to get carriage on cable systems."

""Al Jazeera America and One America News Network (OAN) launched within a few months of each other," OAN parent Herring Networks told Multichannel News. "The latest ratings information from third party Rentrak shows that One America News Network has over four times the ratings [of Al Jazeera America]. We are inquiring about the opportunity to acquire Al Jazeera America," he said."

http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/washington/herring-networks-eyes-buying-al-jazeera-america/146956

Sent from my iPad using DBSTalk


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

To a lot of people who have never seen it, it is the Beheading Channel. I wonder how many old people won't watch Dirty Dancing because it's about... dirty dancing. My late mother wouldn't watch Jaws because, with a name like that, it must be as bloody as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

That's probably nothing but them boasting about how they survived and AJA didn't and taking advantage of the news to get their name out there. If they really wanted to buy something that isn't for sale yet and doesn't have an asking price, they wouldn't be taking shots at them.

Al Jazeera recently signed a bunch of carriage deals last year, they're better off just bringing Al Jazeera English back to the USA and keeping a small ad sales department to handle US ads. They'll still have their major bureaus in the USA like nearly every other news channel around the world does to cover North American stories, even non-English channels that have no international feed have a small bureau in either NYC, DC or LA.


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## APB101 (Sep 1, 2010)

mitchflorida said:


> Maybe that is why it only had 10,000 viewers. It was so good no one would watch it.


I just want to add that _ratings_ (as in consumers) are not the sole determining factor of quality.

The Academy Award nominations, for the year 2015, will be announced tomorrow [Thursday, January 14, 2016 @ 08:30 a.m. ET; 05:30 a.m. PT from Los Angeles, California]. Using that as an example, if the box office results were the sole determining factor of quality, we would routinely see a given year's No. 1 box-office success win the best-picture Oscar.


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

The Beverly Hillbillies was the best show on television from 1962 through 1964, with annual average Nielsen ratings of 36.0 and 39.1, and the greatest sitcom episode ever was The Giant Jackrabbit.


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## mwdxer (Oct 30, 2013)

Al Jazeera English will still exist, but the Americans don't seem to support the channel. Al Jazeera is a popular channel in Europe. For others the channel does stream also. What Dish will replace it with, I do not know. But it may be another news channel like BBC World. Russia Today and the Russian Doc channel are both available in HD too.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

mwdxer said:


> Al Jazeera English will still exist, but the Americans don't seem to support the channel.


Al Jazeera pulled it from US distribution after Al Jazeera America launched. The few providers that had carriage deals for Al Jazeera English had it replaced by Al Jazeera America, the few OTA subchannel affiliates they had like WRNN in the NYC area were forced to drop the channel, and sites that had official streaming partnerships with them like Livestation were forced to geoblock the stream.

The announcement said they're going to "expand its digital presence in the USA that would bring global new global content to America", but they didn't go into specifics if it just meant that they will remove the geoblocks from the Al Jazeera English live stream or if they'll also replace Al Jazeera America with Al Jazeera English on cable and satellite.


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## Soccernut (Jan 20, 2004)

cmasia said:


> Is it possible beIN Sport 2 is on the horizon?


Im assuming you say that because BeIn has the same owner and has enough content to fill another channel.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

mws192 said:


> "One America News Network (OAN) parent Herring Networks is exploring buying the shuttering Al Jazeera America to get carriage on cable systems."


Didn't AJA have issues with carriers who signed agreements for Current and didn't want a content change?



KyL416 said:


> Al Jazeera recently signed a bunch of carriage deals last year, they're better off just bringing Al Jazeera English back to the USA and keeping a small ad sales department to handle US ads.


It looks like they will be shutting down and going stream only in the US. But the concept of simply putting AJE on AJA's channel would have been something I would have tried - if possible.


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## BobCulp (Dec 21, 2013)

I saw Peyton Manning's sarcastic answer and came here to see what's going on. I hope DISH will move Newsmax (ch 223) to AJA's spot.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

Newsmax is paying Dish and DirecTV to be on their lineup, if they want to pay more they can get a better slot


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

KyL416 said:


> Newsmax is paying Dish and DirecTV to be on their lineup, if they want to pay more they can get a better slot


Possibly. Neither carrier has to offer them a better slot and they may be happy where they are.


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## PCampbell (Nov 18, 2006)

tommiet said:


> Another channel I never watched.... Still waiting for ala carte.


For me Top Gear on Amazon will be ala carte. 95$ a year for one show I want to watch, 12 a year that's 7.91 an episode.


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## machavez00 (Nov 2, 2006)

DirecTV can use the spot and carry EWTN in HD :up:


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## dpeters11 (May 30, 2007)

PCampbell said:


> For me Top Gear on Amazon will be ala carte. 95$ a year for one show I want to watch, 12 a year that's 7.91 an episode.


For a lot of us, it's a bonus. I'm a Prime subscriber mainly for the shipping etc. Now I'm trying to figure out if I can make their brick and mortar store work in my favor.


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## TXD16 (Oct 30, 2008)

APB101 said:


> I just want to add that _ratings_ (as in consumers) are not the sole determining factor of quality.


Exactly, it's extremely important for we (the) ignorant minions to be told what is of a good, wholesome, "quality" nature before forming our (their) own decisions. Thank you for pointing that out.


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## PCampbell (Nov 18, 2006)

Unfortunately good quality does not mean success.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Figures... We at Dish finally get the HD feed, and it goes belly up. It is a shame that the American audience doesn't seem to want to support more news channels, and especially ones that don't just tell you what they think you will agree with...


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

We couldn't even support two, when there was just CNN and Headline News. I think the only show on CNN that did well in the early 1980s was Crossfire, the non-news show where four guys shouted at each other, which was a novelty back then.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Stewart Vernon said:


> Figures... We at Dish finally get the HD feed, and it goes belly up. It is a shame that the American audience doesn't seem to want to support more news channels, and especially ones that don't just tell you what they think you will agree with...


Offending your core viewers is not a good way to stay on the air (although offending people your core viewers do not like seems to work).

AJA played the "do not offend" game ... they created a specific feed for the US and populated it with US based broadcasters with their own ethnocentric backgrounds. A lot of people who used to work for the news networks people like to complain about. Perhaps those people were better than their networks, but theyu knew how to keep their jobs - keep their network happy. And most networks know how to stay on the air - keep their viewers happy.

Perhaps AJA was too vanilla. Not enough controversy to attract one side or the other of the political spectrum. And not enough of an audience looking for "neutral" to support them.

With CCNews, RT, BBC News we have some "world view" news channels on DISH and/or DIRECTV. But it could be argued that those channels are just biased in different ways.


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## SayWhat? (Jun 7, 2009)

Y'all can argue all you want about the content being too factual and not enough like the BattleBots formats used on other 'news' channels. I still believe their problems originated from their name and ownership.

I didn't watch them simply because I stopped watching all TV news programs, including all local channels. I get my news solely from the web now where I can jump into and out of stories at my pace.


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## JWKessler (Jun 3, 2004)

I agree that a rebranding of the channel with a less Arabic sounding name might have helped them get a few more viewers. The American staff claimed they were free to do what they wanted and I never saw anything I'd consider propaganda. It wouldn't surprise me if they chose not to cover some issues that might be problematic to the owners, but every channel does that.

One reason for them being dropped I've heard has to do with the drop in the price of oil. The owners were awash in oil money when this service was started, but I suspect they are in belt tightening mode right now. While we are enjoying cheap gas right now I'm not sure that is completely a good thing.


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## mkdtv21 (May 27, 2007)

I thought when they took over Current TV their original plan was to just use the Al Jazeera English feed but American cable and satellite providers were against this and wanted them to create AJ America to make it more American friendly.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

mkdtv21 said:


> I thought when they took over Current TV their original plan was to just use the Al Jazeera English feed but American cable and satellite providers were against this and wanted them to create AJ America to make it more American friendly.


The initial report of the purchase of Current TV mentions Al Jazeera America and the plan that they followed for a separate network. It would be after that purchase that AJA would have negotiated for carriage (trying to get a better deal).


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

I'm sure the name did have a negative effect on a lot of US viewers. That's a shame, though... that people looking for news wouldn't look past that. IF you use that as your rationale for choosing a news channel, then you probably aren't really looking for news anyway, in my opinion.


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## Eva (Nov 8, 2013)

I watched it now and then, was better then CNN or (cough cough) Fox. I was annoyed when Current TV took over the former Newsworld International channel, which I liked.


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## scottchez (Feb 4, 2003)

The channel was never in HD. It had bad picture quality. Who watches non HD channels these days?
Why not replace it with some other international news channel like the BBC world news, or Sky News? Or France 24 in English? Or CNN international.
-
Even the Apple TV has Skynews.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

scottchez said:


> The channel was never in HD.


Are you saying that channel 216 on DISH and channel 347 on DIRECTV are not HD channels?
DISH launched the HD feed November 4th, DIRECTV launched theirs November 2nd.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

scottchez said:


> The channel was never in HD. It had bad picture quality. Who watches non HD channels these days?


AJA IS in HD, newly signed on providers like Time Warner Cable had it in HD for the past few years, while Dish and DirecTV added it in November after they got new deals. Plus not everyone refuses to watch things because they are not HD.



scottchez said:


> Why not replace it with some other international news channel like the BBC world news, or Sky News? Or France 24 in English? Or CNN international.


DirecTV already has BBC World News in HD, Dish will probably get it whenever their contract with AMC Networks (who now handles the US distribution) is up for renewal
Sky News International isn't available on any North American provider (it's not even uplinked to a satellite available in North America), just via the YouTube channel. The international feed that is uplinked to satellite for Europe and Asia is also SD only, only the UK feed is available in HD.
France 24 doesn't have a HD feed, it's just produced in SD widescreen
CNN Interntational's North American feed is only available in letterboxed SD, only the European and Asian feeds are HD


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## SHS (Jan 8, 2003)

KyL416 said:


> Unless you only watch channels like ESPN, TNT, USA, TBS, TLC, AMC, FX, Nick, MTV and Disney, chances are some of your favorites are in that list of 150 so called "un watched" channels if it was based on ratings alone and not just your personal tastes...


I'm good with the ESPN taking a dump rigth long with 100s PPV and other all useless channel as well as Music Audio


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## FLWingNut (Nov 19, 2005)

SHS said:


> I'm good with the ESPN taking a dump rigth long with 100s PPV and other all useless channel as well as Music Audio


So what's left?

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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

Like them are not, live sports are not going anywhere. You want to know what happens in a fantasy world where for some reason ESPN goes under? Millions of dollars worth of sports rights will be up for grabs. Channels like USA, TBS, TNT, CMT, AMC, Spike, Discovery, FX and others would jump at the chance to get the rights to Monday Night Football, TBS would jump at the chance to get more MLB rights, TNT would get more NBA rights, CMT or GAC might grab the NASCAR rights, a bunch of channels would grab the rights to the individual NCAA conferences, etc

So instead of just ESPN being $8, now you'll have several other popular channels who air a lot more than sports charging $3+ each, and since many of these channels also have some of the highest rated shows on cable, they won't be going under anytime soon.

Providers have to cater to a wide variety of viewers, unless those providers want to lose many of their subscribers for not carrying some of the most popular channels on cable, they're going to have to have no choice but to keep those channels and might end up dropping some lesser watched niche channels, like what Verizon did with Sportsman, Outdoor and the Weather Channel last year.


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

ESPN would be missed if it was gone. A decade or so ago, when I was managing a small, private cable system in a retirement community, 95% female, a new manager took over and saw that ESPN was costing him a big chunk of his programming bill, so he sent out a survey and asked if it was OK to drop ESPN and replace it with more than half a dozen channels the system didn't have, like, National Geography, Hallmark (two names that old people love), Biography, the Learning Chanel, etc. and he got unanimous assents - not one single person demanded that ESPN stay - so I made the swaps, and that evening, he called me at my home and said I had to come down that night and get them ESPN back. The residents had gotten his home phone number, which they weren't suppose to have, and they were hounding him relentlessly. I think there was a tennis match on that night.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

KyL416 said:


> CMT or GAC might grab the NASCAR rights,


ESPN gave up NASCAR to NBC and FOX a year ago. Their last race was in 2014. TNT also left live race coverage (summer series) in 2014.

But yes, if ESPN folded up their tent their content would go to other carriers who will want (and need) more money. Fox needs money to support their new "Fox Sports One" and "Fox Sports Two" channels (sounds like they want to be ESPN). NBC needs money to support their NBC Sports Network.

To the dismay of NASCAR fans who could watch races on ESPN and ESPN2, with the occasional race not seen on ESPNNews unless the fan subscribed to a higher package. In 2015 many fans missed races on NBCSN because of package placement on cable and satellite. Race coverage on FS2 was also missed by many fans.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Yeah... as noted... FOX, NBC, and CBS all have their own dedicated sports channels (some more than one) now... ABC would too if they weren't owned by Disney who also owns ESPN already.

There are also a number of other non-big-network sports channels that pickup a lot of things. In my area some of the local channels also pick up local sporting events too, that the networks would never carry... so IF ESPN folded tomorrow, there would be a mad scramble by a number of channels to get rights for all that stuff... and prices on those channels would go up... and you'd end up paying the same AND those channels might drop some other programming you like to make room for the sports they pick up... so there's no way this shakes out in a way that eliminates sports or eliminates you paying something for it.

Just like I'm paying for a lot of content on a lot of channels I never watch... That's why I don't look at it that way. I divide my bill out over the cost of per-day in each month... and I'm still paying just a few dollars a day for 24/7 viewing of pretty much anything and everything I could want... and there is NOWHERE I can get a better deal on entertainment than that.

You might argue Netflix or something... but most of their content only exists because the other networks are producing them and airing them first! Yeah, Netflix has its own stuff now... but IF all they had was their own stuff, you could watch all their stuff in a day and that $10 per month would be less of a deal than it seems like at the moment.


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## yosoyellobo (Nov 1, 2006)

AntAltMike said:


> ESPN would be missed if it was gone. A decade or so ago, when I was managing a small, private cable system in a retirement community, 95% female, a new manager took over and saw that ESPN was costing him a big chunk of his programming bill, so he sent out a survey and asked if it was OK to drop ESPN and replace it with more than half a dozen channels the system didn't have, like, National Geography, Hallmark (two names that old people love), Biography, the Learning Chanel, etc. and he got unanimous assents - not one single person demanded that ESPN stay - so I made the swaps, and that evening, he called me at my home and said I had to come down that night and get them ESPN back. The residents had gotten his home phone number, which they weren't suppose to have, and they were hounding him relentlessly. I think there was a tennis match on that night.


Was it you that gave them the number by any chance?


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

Stewart Vernon said:


> Yeah, Netflix has its own stuff now... but IF all they had was their own stuff, you could watch all their stuff in a day and that $10 per month would be less of a deal than it seems like at the moment.


Even much of Netflix's own stuff isn't things they done from the ground up, so they didn't have to fund the development cycle, where even in rejected pilots that never make it to air, the cast and crew get paid for their time

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was a show originally made for NBC and then they passed on it. (Complete with cameos by WNBC reporters and references to Law and Order SVU reruns on USA in the early episodes when they thought it was going to be on NBC's winter/spring schedule for that season)

Arrested Development and Fuller House obviously wouldn't be a thing if they didn't air on other networks first

Also, anytime you see an announcment from Netflix where they say "Available worldwide except..." it usually means the show was made for a network in that country. A lot of their "original" kids shows like The Next Step, Inspector Gadget, Degrassi Next Class, Mako Mermaids and Some Assembly Required are stuff imported from Canada or Australia.


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## phrelin (Jan 18, 2007)

Stewart Vernon said:


> Just like I'm paying for a lot of content on a lot of channels I never watch... That's why I don't look at it that way. I divide my bill out over the cost of per-day in each month... and I'm still paying just a few dollars a day for 24/7 viewing of pretty much anything and everything I could want... and there is NOWHERE I can get a better deal on entertainment than that.
> 
> You might argue Netflix or something... but most of their content only exists because the other networks are producing them and airing them first! Yeah, Netflix has its own stuff now... but IF all they had was their own stuff, you could watch all their stuff in a day and that $10 per month would be less of a deal than it seems like at the moment.


I look at it from the point of view of the cost per week for "channels I watch." I've started a separate thread *The Cost of "TV" Channels - Streaming Gives Perspective* with a post giving my perspective.


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## djlong (Jul 8, 2002)

I've seen the slants of new to the right and left. I've seen news that was NEWS. Al-Jazeera America was NEWS - not your entertainment CRAP.

It was basically cursed by it's name because of someone deciding to send their propaganda to another corporate cousin to AJAM. It didn't used to be this way. "Back in the day", nobody blamed the networks when the thieves released footage of their bank robberies.


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## MrDad0330 (Jun 16, 2007)

Oh gee...I wont miss them one bit


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

MrDad0330 said:


> Oh gee...I wont miss them one bit


I'm sure others can say the same about one of your favorite channels too


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## mrro82 (Sep 12, 2012)

djlong said:


> I've seen the slants of new to the right and left. I've seen news that was NEWS. Al-Jazeera America was NEWS - not your entertainment CRAP.
> 
> It was basically cursed by it's name because of someone deciding to send their propaganda to another corporate cousin to AJAM. It didn't used to be this way. "Back in the day", nobody blamed the networks when the thieves released footage of their bank robberies.


Couldn't have said it better.


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## pablo (Oct 11, 2007)

Could this mean it will be replaced with AJE? Hopefully in HD.


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## jsk (Dec 27, 2006)

RIP AJA. Yes, It is the only 24/7 news channel with a large amount of news (i.e. the reporting of actual facts) content. Even during their news programs, CNN, HLN, Fox News, and MSNBC will report one fact and talk to "experts" about that fact for 15 minutes and repeat. You get more facts by watching AJA for five minutes then you do watching the others for five hours.

I hope Dish gets BBC World and AJE. I can get both on my Roku, but it is sometimes flaky and only available on one TV in my house.


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## tinhead (Sep 21, 2006)

mrro82 said:


> Couldn't have said it better.


+1!
I will miss the real, unbiased news of AJA.
It's like going to CSPAN and listening to the original speech in Congress then tuning into FOX, ABC, NBC etc. and listening to the spin on each channel depending on who owns the channel. Real News in this country has been bought & paid for like our Congress. (Media ie. Trump!) The ultimate reality show comes to real life. You listen to every channel and they all have different 'facts'. This country needs to unite behind honesty, trust and to let go of the fear propagated by the mass media. Innuendo, false accusations and the unwillingness to listen to the 'other guy'. I guess I'll have to watch more BBC and AJA online to get the real news.


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

jsk said:



> ...You get more facts by watching AJA for five minutes then you do watching the others for five hours...


Make that, " You _would _get more facts by watching AJA for five minutes...", but we don't, because we don't watch it.

I sing the praises of Al Jazeera English as much as anyone here, but the only time I access its stream is when I am composing a discussion thread post and check to see if it is still there. I used to tell people I like the videos on VH1 better than the videos on MTV, too.

You can watch it here http://www.zahitvstation.com/watch-al-jazeera-english-live


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

AntAltMike said:


> I sing the praises of Al Jazeera English as much as anyone here, but the only time I access its stream is when I am composing a discussion thread post and check to see if it is still there.


And that is AJ's biggest problem ... getting people to come back and watch some more. The viewership peak from when people say "hey, check out the new channel" doesn't last. People fall back to either their old news channels or non channel news sources (web). And for AJE streaming the viewer is already on the web with thousands of other options.

AJA needed to make themselves the "go to" news channel for more people. They did not succeed in that goal. A few loyal viewers was too few. The major news channels have much larger core "my news channels is ..." viewership. CNN has viewership from people who do have a regular news channel. When there is real "breaking news" (terrorism, storms, etc.) people tune to CNN unless they are already a regular viewer of something else. But once other sources (web, nightly newscasts) pick up the story every channel has to rely on their own core audience. AJA's core was not big enough.


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## Richjr42 (Nov 10, 2012)

The channel is gone despite an on-air message saying that it would no longer air after Tuesday,April 12.


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

Is there any word regarding what the AL Jazeera netwoks might do to increase the availability of Al Jazeera English to the United States. It had been on some broadcast channels until the cable deal was struck.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

Richjr42 said:


> The channel is gone despite an on-air message saying that it would no longer air after Tuesday,April 12.


I'm watching it right now on DirecTV


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

KyL416 said:


> I'm watching it right now on DirecTV


And it is still live on DISH.

On DISH "Off Air" is in the EPG at Midnight ET 4/13 (programming ends at the end of day 4/12).
It looks like their final two days will feature "best of" and other "weren't we great" programming.


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## Nick (Apr 23, 2002)

Still on Comcast/Xfinity here.


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## Richjr42 (Nov 10, 2012)

Okay,i see my error. Never mind. I didn't see that "-1" in the channel guide earlier.


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

From today's Chicago Tribune:

*Al-Jazeera America network shuts down Tuesday*

*Al-Jazeera America is set to sign off April 11, 2016, after a costly and failed effort to break into the U.S. cable news market.*
(SAUL LOEB / AFP/Getty Images)

Tribune news services 
April 12, 2016 9:43 AM : New York

_Al-Jazeera America, which couldn't attract an audience to another cable news network in the United States, signs off Tuesday night following a three-hour live farewell designed to highlight its work since a 2013 launch.

The farewell begins at 6 p.m. EDT and will be repeated immediately before Al-Jazeera America goes dark. Local cable and satellite operators will decide what replaces the channel in their markets..._

More: www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-al-jazeera-america-last-day-20160412-story.html

This may be the third farewell broadcast I have even watched, the others being Howdy Doody and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

They opened their three hour farewell show tonight with

Flashpoint: Ferguson, Protestors vs Police Retrospective

Update 6:11
Baltimore Unrest, The Impact of Freddie Gray

Updates: Witness protection problems, now global warming.

This is quality stuff.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

Since DirecTV cut it off at midnight, for those who didn't get to see the real shutdown after the montage, the actual satellite feed showed a spinning globe and a graphic saying "Al Jazeera America is no longer available" and then a minute later the feed cut to bars and tones.


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

KyL416 said:


> Since DirecTV cut it off at midnight, for those who didn't get to see the real shutdown after the montage, the actual satellite feed showed a spinning globe and a graphic saying "Al Jazeera America is no longer available" and then a minute later the feed cut to bars and tones.


My local Fios showed the spinning globe as well, but now it shows a locally generated mssage scree saying,

"Your Fios is working. You are not seeing any programming on this channel because Al Jazeera America stopped providing content to Verizon on April 12, 2016. Thanks for being a Fios customer."

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, here in Washington, DC, we had Al Jazeera English on a "MHz" broadcast channel up to the debut of the AL Jazeera cable channel, so it seems likely we'll get it back on broadcast TV.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

DISH's slate makes it clear that AJA has ceased and is not available on any provider.


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## KyL416 (Nov 11, 2005)

Yeah, with the way Verizon worded it, if someone didn't know better they would think FiOS is in a dispute with them


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

James Long said:


> DISH's slate makes it clear that AJA has ceased and is not available on any provider.


But I imagine that Al Jazeera English becomes immediately available to anyone with whom they negotiate mutually agreeable terms.


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## mnassour (Apr 23, 2002)

Frankly, I was kind of hoping that AJE would come on. But it looks like that won't happen.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

AntAltMike said:


> But I imagine that Al Jazeera English becomes immediately available to anyone with whom they negotiate mutually agreeable terms.


Everyone should remember that this channel was put on because it was a rebranded channel that had distribution deals that some didn't even want to honor because they thought the change in programming was large enough to not accept as a simple rebranding. Unless that channel is free I don't see anyone paying for it, why would they if this sister station couldn't even get enough audience to survive but a couple years?


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

inkahauts said:


> Unless that channel is free I don't see anyone paying for it, why would they if this sister station couldn't even get enough audience to survive but a couple years?


It can survive because its production cost would be near zero. Al Jazeera America cost a fortune to produce, what with its American domestic staff of 600 people, including some expensive, American cable TV news anchors, and bureaus in many major markets, though Al Jazeera English is a news channel, like France 24 and NHK/Japan, and Americans have even less interest in those international news channels than in news magazines, so the viability question will be, would DISH give it bandwidth if it could have it for free.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Nobody rides for free. If a channel isn't popular enough to pay for then they need to be willing to pay for distribution. Having well rounded subscription services with channels for everyone is a nice concept - but it isn't the reality.


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## inkahauts (Nov 13, 2006)

AntAltMike said:


> It can survive because its production cost would be near zero. Al Jazeera America cost a fortune to produce, what with its American domestic staff of 600 people, including some expensive, American cable TV news anchors, and bureaus in many major markets, though Al Jazeera English is a news channel, like France 24 and NHK/Japan, and Americans have even less interest in those international news channels than in news magazines, so the viability question will be, would DISH give it bandwidth of it could have it for free.


It might be able to make money for that company but it has to also make money for providers and those economics aren't any different than the channel that just closed...


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

Al Jazeera English, France 24 and NHK World (Japan) don't have to make money for their providers if their governments or pro-government underwriters that simply want their product available for viewing. What made Al Jazeera America an economic flop was that they wanted it viewed by a lot more people, so they spent tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to maximize its viewership, but discovered that, with sub $40 a barrel oil prices, that expenditure for those poor results was unsustainable.

France 24 and NHK World are available on DISH even though they are not any more popular than Al Jazeera, and probably less so. Al Jazeera reportedly had initially met resistance to national carriage because of concerns that they were seen as anti-American, so they worked around that with their Current TV deal, they did so in a manner that was unsustainable to them, and, who knows, at $100 a barrel for oil, maybe they would have kept Al Jazeera America afloat. After all, how much did the Soviets spend on Cuba before they dropped it? But now, what with America having watched and largely ignored Al Jazeera America without being offended by it, and with Hillary Clinton and others having praised its coverage of the Arab Spring, it will be a simple matter of arriving at mutually agreeable carriage terms, which likely will not include any favorable channel placements that Current TV might have had.

My FIOS channel 114 continues to display that curious message about Al Jazeera America having stopped providing content, leading me to wonder if Verizon is contractually required to continue to make that channel available to the corporation that held such distribution rights. You may recall that the cable companies initially fought Al Jazeera's placement of its America channel into its acquired, Current TV slot, but I think those objections were all settled out of court, so what is most likely happening now is posturing between Al Jazeera and the cable companies while they each try to get the most favorable terms for substitution of AL Jazeera English in that bandwidth. Since the bandwidth cost to the cable company is near zero, as its marginal "production" cost, there will be terms under which it is worth carrying as an add-on to a basic or low tier package. The bugaboo at the moment is surely determining of what remaining value the purchased, Current TV carriage rights are to each party.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

The "content not available" message is a courtesy to their viewer. Instead of the channel simply going away or having some other content the company provides an announcement.


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

AntAltMike said:


> ...My FIOS channel 114 continues to display that curious message about Al Jazeera America having stopped providing content, leading me to wonder if Verizon is contractually required to continue to make that channel available to the corporation that held such distribution rights. You may recall that the cable companies initially fought Al Jazeera's placement of its America channel into its acquired, Current TV slot, but I think those objections were all settled out of court, so what is most likely happening now is posturing between Al Jazeera and the cable companies while they each try to get the most favorable terms for substitution of AL Jazeera English in that bandwidth... The bugaboo at the moment is surely determining of what remaining value the purchased, Current TV carriage rights are to each party.


 From a recent New York Times article:

*Al Jazeera America Executive Files Bias Suit *

*By JOHN KOBLINAPRIL 22, 2016*

_"...In the suit, Mr. Gupta asserts that ...Al Jazeera America is responsible for more than $800 million in the process of winding down, if it pays out its contracts to cable operators in full..."_

That is my suspicion. By innocuously and unassumingly announcing that it is awaiting and receptive to continued programming from AL Jazeera America, the cable companies avoid the claim that they have contributed to any diminution of the future value of their contracts.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

An interesting concept ... asking a channel provider to pay money for their failure to deliver a channel. But the easiest answer in this case would be for AJ to provide a channel ... AJE rebranded as AJA. Unless the contract defined the channel in a way that AJE would not qualify as fulfilling the requirement met by providing AJA.

If providers intended to replace AJA with AJE the content would be there.


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

No, they are not asking them to pay for failure to deliver. The cable companies very begrudgingly negotiated the "assignment" of the Current TV carriage contract, in which the cable company holds its nose and accepts contractually agreed upon streams of payments over some interval in exchange for which, they are to guarantee availability of a channel and its tier positioning, and so it is likely now the position of those cable companies that Al Jazeera's obligation to continue to pay for that availability does not cease with its declination to furnish the agreed upon programming.

Each cable company's carriage contract with Al Jazeera America is unique to those parties, and the parties now play legal poker with each other. While the cable companies have legally enforceable contracts with some Al Jazeera entity or entities, we do not know what those terms are, or who the parties to those contracts are, so if a cable company only has a contract with AL Jazeera America and if that is a legal entity that is separate from remainder of the AL Jazeera networks, then each cable company now positions itself for its maximum defensible share of the assets if Al Jazeera America is now insolvent, while retaining its maximum negotiating leverage when Al Jazeera English proffers a new a carriage offer.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

AntAltMike said:


> The cable companies very begrudgingly negotiated the "assignment" of the Current TV carriage contract, in which the cable company holds its nose and accepts contractually agreed upon streams of payments over some interval ...


So you are claiming that CurrentTV and AJA were paying for carriage?
If not, can you make whatever you are claiming more clear?


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

James Long said:


> So you are claiming that CurrentTV and AJA were paying for carriage?
> If not, can you make whatever you are claiming more clear?


 It is the network's executive vice president of finance, Anand Gupta, who claimed in the lawsuit, that, "_Al Jazeera America is responsible for more than $800 million in the process of winding down, if it pays out its contracts to cable operators in full." _That doesn't necessarily mean that AL Jazeera owes the cable companies $800, It could be that $800 million is his estimate of its total liabilities, including the payouts due to cable operators, but based on that, I'd say that Al Jazeera was paying for carriage.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

"What's more, the filing reveals that DirecTV will no longer be *obligated to pay* for Al Jazeera America after July 31." (2015)
(The carriage agreement for Current TV expired in July 2015, but was eventually renewed. The end of the contract meant they were no longer obligated to carry the channel.)

"The result was that other distributors got "net effective rates lower than what *AJA charges* to DirecTV," according to the complaint."

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/directv-seeks-75-million-al-805366
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr-esq/directv-al-jazeera-settle-75-820396

So DIRECTV and others were PAYING Current TV for carriage. DIRECTV had "most favored nation" status which required that they be offered the same or a better deal than other carriers. (Time Warner Cable was allowed by AJA to drop the channel and renegotiate carriage ... DIRECTV wanted the same opportunity.)

According to SNL Kagan (via CNBC) Al Jazeera *charged 13c per subscriber per month* in 2014.
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/05/06/how-much-would-it-cost-to-get-your-favorite-channels-a-la-carte.html

Here is some speculation from 2013 as to where AJA would be responsible for a payment to carriers:
The New York Times, in a report today, speculated that Al Jazeera "may" be paying Time Warner Cable fees for "marketing and advertising sales support," though it provides no attribution for the statement. But it may be that sort of quid pro quo - you pay me for my subscribers, I pay you a little extra for getting my programming to them - that makes this deal feasible when both sides face challenges of their own.

http://variety.com/2013/biz/news/al-jazeera-america-and-time-warner-cable-what-broke-the-impasse-1200758638/
When AJA launched on DISH I noticed a lot of "cross channel promotion" commercials for AJA on other DISH channels. So it is _possible_ that carriers received some payment from AJA. But for the channel itself, all signs point to carriers paying AJA.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Caution: Auto Play Video ...
http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/22/media/al-jazeera-america-what-went-wrong/

The above is a nice "post mortem" of what went right and wrong at the channel. Buried in the article is the paragraph:
"But there will still be substantial costs associated with winding down the channel. Some of the distributors are likely to demand penalty payments because the channel will be breaking its carriage contracts."

A penalty for failure to deliver.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

Ignoring the naming discussions and general lack of people willing to watch new/different news channels... I think the biggest mistake here was that Aljazeera bought a channel that itself was failing. CurrentTV was failing, and Aljazeera bought that channel as an attempt to get its foot in the door rather than try to get one of its own channels carried.

I've seen this in other markets... especially in retail... where a business is failing and an investor comes in who wants to open a business and wants access to that location and customers so they are willing to buy in and assume the debt and operations of that company. Often this turns out to be a poor investment because instead of just financing your own startup venture you're jumping into someone else's spot and assuming their problems and juggling fixing those + implementing your own stuff.

Aljazeera likely inherited various deals and contracts that they might have otherwise not made in their own launch venture... and it was probably just too much of an uphill battle to try and get their business going here in the US while trying to smooth over whatever was also going down the tank in CurrentTV at the time.

They'd have been smarter to have ignored CurrentTV, let that fail as it was about to do... then keep pushing for Aljazeera English to get carried in that newly vacant spot, and since they already had that channel launched, there wouldn't have been nearly the investment to port that over here as it likely was to try and clean up and convert CurrentTV to their liking.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

There seem to be a lot more channel launches that start from buying an existing channel or modifying one already owned than from scratch. The most successful channels would not be the first targets for conversion (although with a domino effect, content moved off of a sold, leased or partnered channel may end up changing the identity of a more successful channel).


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

Stewart Vernon said:


> Ignoring the naming discussions and general lack of people willing to watch new/different news channels... I think the biggest mistake here was that Aljazeera bought a channel that itself was failing. CurrentTV was failing, and Aljazeera bought that channel as an attempt to get its foot in the door rather than try to get one of its own channels carried.
> 
> I've seen this in other markets... especially in retail... where a business is failing and an investor comes in who wants to open a business and wants access to that location and customers so they are willing to buy in and assume the debt and operations of that company. Often this turns out to be a poor investment because instead of just financing your own startup venture you're jumping into someone else's spot and assuming their problems and juggling fixing those + implementing your own stuff.
> 
> ...


Like taking over D(irect)B(broadcast)S(atellite)Talk and morphing its name to D(igital)B(it)S(tream)Talk, to exploit its vast network of "favorite website" links!

All they "bought" from Current TV was a preferred contractual right to put their foot in the door (and I suppose some hardware and leases), which gave them a negotiating position that was stronger than they had as a seemingly anti-American political interest that wanted a megaphone. They had been in negotions to get their network's programming on the air domestically for years, but buying CurrentTV proved to be more workable..

Basically, 1) they wildly overestimated the viewership that could be garnered by a middle-Eastern news channel that was competently run with ample news resources, and 2) oil dropped from $100 a barrel to $40 a barrel. Lots of bars go out of business when their owners lose some of their biggest cocaine customers, too, and that is not a joke. The most successful bar/restaurant model is to sell cocaine and then buy better furnishings than the competition, charge less for food, and book bigger name entertainment than the competition and use the drug money profits to subsidize the business, which enhances the public stature of the business owner. People who buy expensive things are said to have good taste, as though the reason the rest of us did not buy those things was because we simply did not have the appreciation of them that the drug dealers do.

There is going to be big turmoil in the middle east if the price of oil stays at $40 a barrel. I doubt that most people can fathom how much money the extended families of the rulers of the oil producing countries take for themselves, or the "difficulty" of reducing the billions they collectively take for themselves each year. One of my customers used to be a high school age Saudi who had his own million and a half dollar condominium to live in by himself while his parents lived elsewhere in town, but I couldn't trace him into the royal family tree with the limited resources I had. I lost him as a customer when he moved into a larger and more expensive condo in a building I didn't service. These countries can't just have one big "confab" at which they sit down and agree on how many millions less that each draw each year.

Al Jazeera America couldn't possibly have ever made a profit, but they might have seen themselves getting on the second place cable new calliope (like Lisa Simpson being the sax player for Art Garfunkel, John Oats and Jim Messina) and drawing an audience of a couple hundred thousand viewers in the evening, while subsidizing this prestigious enterprise. Unfortunately for them, 1) they drew maybe ten percent of the viewership that I suspect they had hoped for, and 2) they ran short of play money. And unfortunately for us, they seemingly proved that there is no market for the real news that so many of us believe we want. Like Alan Thicke said after Thicke of the Night flopped against The Tonight Show, "They said it couldn't be done, and they hired us to prove it."


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

AntAltMike said:


> Like taking over D(irect)B(broadcast)S(atellite)Talk and morphing its name to D(igital)B(it)S(tream)Talk, to exploit its vast network of "favorite website" links!


Apples and oranges. This site (to the best of my knowledge, and I've been around for more than 10 years now) wasn't bought and converted into something else and renamed. It was bought, and then slowly evolved over time... naturally I'd add, even, to incorporate the different ways in which people are scarfing up their entertainment.



AntAltMike said:


> All they "bought" from Current TV was a preferred contractual right to put their foot in the door (and I suppose some hardware and leases), which gave them a negotiating position that was stronger than they had as a seemingly anti-American political interest that wanted a megaphone.


I think they also bought a lot of contracts with CurrentTV personalities... contracts that they otherwise wouldn't have had in addition to whatever contracts they have with their other newscasters on their other channels.

I know a guy who wanted to run a comic book store... he knew guys running a comic store that had a good base of customers and a good location BUT were in heavy debt and having problems getting deliveries of new shipments because of that debt. They were going to have to go out of business. He offered them a buy-out offer IF they would walk away... but what that meant was now this guy was on the hook for all their debt AND saddled with the same problems in getting new merchandise to sell and dig out from the hole and that was something he couldn't overcome even though he was a better otherwise business man.

He'd have been FAR better off just letting those guys tank and go out of business... then coming behind them and talking to the landlord about leasing that exact spot once those guys defaulted... and he'd be starting a new business enterprise in the same location WITHOUT their debt holding him back. He would have had to rely on word of mouth a bit more than inheriting their customer base... but he'd have had a chance more so than he did by buying them out.



AntAltMike said:


> They had been in negotions to get their network's programming on the air domestically for years, but buying CurrentTV proved to be more workable..


This is true... it shorted that path considerably... although they immediately had problems with all the carriers who wanted out of those contracts with them because they were changing the name and content of the station that was under contract... and I'm not sure (as evidenced by the failure here) that their buyout can in any way be labeled as a success. I maintain, thus, they would have been better off sticking to their attempts to negotiate carriage of their already existing AlJazeera English network... that they were already investing in... and even if they still were negotiating today, they'd have spent far less money doing that than they sank into CurrentTV I suspect.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Stewart Vernon said:


> I maintain, thus, they would have been better off sticking to their attempts to negotiate carriage of their already existing AlJazeera English network... that they were already investing in... and even if they still were negotiating today, they'd have spent far less money doing that than they sank into CurrentTV I suspect.


What stopped them from buying Current TV and simply putting AJE's stream on the channel?
Carriers that did not want the AJE channel on their system.

If it was easy for AJ to negotiate AJE as a channel carriers pay for I believe they would have followed that path. But they couldn't complete the sale. So AJ created a channel that was more palatable to a US audience and stuck their foot in the door by buying the carriage contracts of Current TV.

Financially they would have been better off just to use their AJE feed. Perhaps better off enough that they could have paid for carriage. But converting from a channel that pays for carriage to one that is paid for carriage isn't easy. And a news channel without a focus on the US audience would likely fail worse than AJA did.

The improved product of AJA failed to find a large enough American audience. I doubt the world based AJE would have done any better. (BTW: Al Jazeera Mubasher continues as an Arabic language news channel on DISH channel 672 for international subscribers.)


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

That was my point though... they were having a hard time getting AJE carried in the US... but at least it was only costing them a little bit more to keep trying to talk than it cost them to have the channel.

Whereas... buying CurrenTV cost them up-front money, and then operating costs for a whole 'nother channel that they otherwise didn't want/need IF they could get AJE carried... and since AJA ended up failing, that's money they just threw into a black hole. They'd have been better off financially by saving that money all this time, no? And even if they still didn't have AJE on in the US, at least they wouldn't also be out all this money?

That's all I'm saying. The end result is they lost a bunch of money in a failed venture and are no closer today to getting AJE carried than they were back then.


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## AntAltMike (Nov 21, 2004)

Hindsight is 20-20. If they had attained half the audience of Headline News, and if oil were still selling for $100 a barrel, I think they'd be pleased to lose however many million a year while enjoying being "players" in America's cable news business.


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## James Long (Apr 17, 2003)

Most new ventures are built on high hopes. AJ expected to be successful and profitable.


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