Pan-Arab Al-Jazeera buys Current TV from Al Gore

By RYAN NAKASHIMA AP Business Writer The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES (AP) — With its purchase of left-leaning Current TV, the Pan-Arab news channel Al-Jazeera has fulfilled a long-held quest to reach tens of millions of U.S. homes. But its new audience immediately got a little smaller.

The nation's second-largest TV operator, Time Warner Cable Inc., dropped Current after the deal was confirmed Wednesday, a sign that the channel will have an uphill climb to expand its reach.

"Our agreement with Current has been terminated and we will no longer be carrying the service. We are removing the service as quickly as possible," the company said in a statement.

Still, the acquisition of Current, the news network that cofounded by former Vice President Al Gore, boosts Al-Jazeera's reach in the U.S. beyond a few large U.S. metropolitan areas including New York and Washington nearly ninefold to about 40 million homes.

Gore confirmed the sale Wednesday, saying in a statement that Al-Jazeera shares Current TV's mission "to give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling."

Al-Jazeera, owned by the government of Qatar, plans to gradually transform Current into a network called Al-Jazeera America by adding five to 10 new U.S. bureaus beyond the five it has now and hiring more journalists. More than half of the content will be U.S. news and the network will have its headquarters in New York, spokesman Stan Collender said.

Collender said there are no rules against foreign ownership of a cable channel — unlike the strict rules limiting foreign ownership of free-to-air TV stations. He said the move is based on demand, adding that 40 percent of viewing traffic on Al-Jazeera English's website is from the U.S.

"This is a pure business decision based on recognized demand," Collender said. "When people watch Al-Jazeera, they tend to like it a great deal."

Previous to Al-Jazeera's purchase, Current TV was in 60 million homes. It is carried by Comcast Corp., which owned less than a 10 percent stake in Current TV, as well as DirecTV. Neither company announced plans to drop the channel.

In 2010, Al-Jazeera English's managing director, Tony Burman, blamed a "very aggressive hostility" from the Bush administration for reluctance among cable and satellite companies to show the network.

Even so, Al-Jazeera has garnered respect for its ability to build a serious news product in a short time. In a statement announcing the deal, it touted numerous U.S. journalism awards it received in 2012, including the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award Grand Prize and the Scripps Howard Award for Television/Cable In-Depth Reporting.

But there may be a culture clash at the network. Dave Marash, a former "Nightline" reporter who worked for Al-Jazeera in Washington, said he left the network in 2008 in part because he sensed an anti-American bias there.

Current, meanwhile, began as a groundbreaking effort to promote user-generated content. But it has settled into a more conventional format of political talk television with a liberal bent. Gore worked on-air as an analyst during its recent election night coverage

Its leading personalities are former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and Cenk Uygur, a former political commentator on MSNBC who hosts the show called "The Young Turks." Current signed Keith Olbermann to be its top host in 2011 but his tenure lasted less than a year before it ended in bad blood on both sides.

Current has largely been outflanked by MSNBC in its effort be a liberal alternative to the leading cable news network, Fox News Channel.

Current hired former CNN Washington bureau chief David Bohrman in 2011 to be its president. Bohrman pushed the network to innovate technologically, with election night coverage that emphasized a conversation over social media.

Current TV, founded in 2005 by former vice president Gore and Joel Hyatt, is expected to post $114 million in revenue in 2013, according to research firm SNL Kagan. The firm pegged the network's cash flow at nearly $24 million a year

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I bet Daniel Pearl's widow and children are really proud that you were able to find a suitable buyer that held the same belief system as you.

In this case it is AL.

Within hours of CurrentTV officially being sold to Al Jazeera—netting Al Gore a cool $100 million—Time Warner Cable pulled the network from its channel lineups. Apparently, Time Warner didn't even wait until last night's programming day was over to yank Current from its service, deciding to pull the plug (at least in the New York City market) before the end of Eliot Spitzer's nightly show.

The network did not give an official reason for the move, but many have speculated that it's simply prejudice against the new owners, who are based in Doha, Qatar, and have seen their fair share of controversy over the years. The Middle East-focused Al Jazeera began as an Arabic-only network, before adding a English language version, and has been accused in the past of a decidedly anti-American bias and even of sympathy for terrorist organizations. More than a decade after the September 11 attacks first brought the network to the attention of most Americans, and despite its impressive coverage of the Arab Spring in 2011, those stereotypes still persist.

Most U.S. cable companies still refuse to carry Al Jazeera English, although thanks to an unusual "sublet" deal with another network, it is actually available on Time Warner—but only part time and only in New York City. As for Current, Time Warner had previously announced that its carriage contract with Current had expired and that it was expecting to be more ruthless about dropping networks that get poor ratings. (Current averages a paltry 42,000 viewers a night.) That could mean that Current got what was coming to it, or that Time Warner merely wants to renegotiate its contact with the new owners, who do plan to completely remake Current's format into "Al Jazeera America."

However, when announcing the sale to his employees, Current CEO Joel Hyatt specifically noted that Time Warner "did not consent to the sale to Al Jazeera" suggesting that reason was about more than business. All of Current's other providers will continue to honor their carriage deals.

In reporting on the sale, Brian Stelter of The New York Times wrote that former Vice President Al Gore had personally lobbied the providers to support the sale, since the carriage agreements are what Al Jazeera was actually buying. Even without the blessing of Time Warner, Gore will reportedly make $100 million for his 20 percent stake in the company. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to get the deal done before December 31, meaning he will have to pay the higher post-fiscal cliff tax rates.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/business/2013/01/time-warner-cable-dropped-currenttv-soon-it-was-sold-al-jazeera/60529/ 

So instead, Mr. "our planet has a fever" sells his crappy TV station to a news organization funded by oil money. Big-time oppressors of women. The PR mouthpiece for Bin Laden every time he wanted to release one of his taped excrement blasts, post 9/11.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

:-k

Forgot the NINE!!!!!!!!!