Aljazeera America is shutting down April 30: New York Based channel is closing - Page 4

NY

NYTV 17 January 2016 5:14pm

Most likely, the AJAM DC staff may be reassigned to AJE, but the job cuts may be strictly for the New York staff. Speaking of his time with AJAM, Anchor Ali Velshi, who joined form CNN Domestic, said that leaving for AJAM was "worth the risk"
http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/ali-velshi-leaving-cnn-for-ajam-was-worth-the-risk/282302

Does Al Jazeera English have their own correspondents in DC or do they solely rely on AJAM talent? As a side note I wonder how much money they will be saving given they don't have to rent out one of the studios at the Newseum. The Newseum studios are a prime piece of real estate being blocks from capital hill.

They previously used the staff of the DC bureau, but when the Bureau was reorganized for AJAM (it would also move to a new location--The Newseum) AJE would just share correspondents with them

NY

NYTV 17 January 2016 5:17pm

Charles posted:

Independent posted:

Rkolsen posted:

Does Al Jazeera English have their own correspondents in DC or do they solely rely on AJAM talent?

I don't know but I can tell you the DC correspondents that appear often on AJE are Patty Culhane, Kimberly Halkett, Alan Fisher, Rosland Jordan, Rob Reynolds, and Shihab Rattansi. They've been with AJE before AJAM and some used to anchor the DC bulletins before they were cancelled.

AJE used to have a really great DC operation. Back when AJE was still running on the "follow the sun" broadcasting strategy with KL, Doha, London, and DC each having a few hours of airtime per day, I always remember AJE DC's primetime news hours with Shihab Rattansi and Ghida Fakhry to be some of the best. Their US coverage was far more interesting and unique than anything else that any other network was doing, and it was certainly more compelling and critical of the US than AJAM is. Those hours of news were even carried on PBS subchannels around the country for a period of time.

Sadly, a lot of the great people you mentioned (plus others) refused to take part in the AJAM experiment or left, and their rolling news broadcasts were taken away shortly before AJAM launched.

The other casualty to the AJAM experiment was also (indirectly) Riz Khan, whose show was replaced with The Stream on AJE, and then AJAM produced a separate version of its own for a while (or maybe they still do?). Inside Story also split off into two separate versions for both networks, though the AJAM version is very different from what the AJE one use to be/is.

It would be great to see AJE in North America return to what it used to be, or at least have something similar to what AJ London has with a few hours of primetime news with a regional angle.

Most likely, Al Jazeera may end up just streaming AJE rather than doing a regional angle. Originally, they were going make cuts across the board with Arabic receiving the bulk of them, but AJAM was decided to eat most if not all of them.

IN

Independent 17 January 2016 10:43pm

Charles posted:

It would be great to see AJE in North America return to what it used to be, or at least have something similar to what AJ London has with a few hours of primetime news with a regional angle.

As unlikely as it is, I'm still hoping they will hold onto staff in DC and revive at the very least those inserts from Washington 'with the top stories in the Americas' during the Newshour. Even though DC doesn't produce bulletins or inserts, they (in Doha) still continue to frequently cover stories from the often forgotten Latin American countries (a feature I really like about AJE) so the content is pretty much the same as before but it's better presentation-wise to have news from DC during primetime in the Americas.

By the way, AJE is still available north of the border.

Last edited by Independent on 17 January 2016 10:54pm - 2 times in total

NY

NYTV 21 January 2016 11:07pm

AJAM has now started their layoffs, all 700 are to go
http://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/al-jazeera-america-begins-painful-process-of-layoffs/282667

GL

globaltraffic24 22 January 2016 9:52am

It'll be interesting to see if this is the only cuts Al Jazeera makes. Last September the rumours were that between 800 and 1000 people would go. Of course, at that time, we were being told that AJAM would be the only operation EXEMPT from the cuts, so who knows what to believe!

http://www.thedrum.com/news/2015/09/23/al-jazeera-set-cut-hundreds-jobs

NY

NYTV 22 January 2016 1:53pm

globaltraffic24 posted:

It'll be interesting to see if this is the only cuts Al Jazeera makes. Last September the rumours were that between 800 and 1000 people would go. Of course, at that time, we were being told that AJAM would be the only operation EXEMPT from the cuts, so who knows what to believe!

http://www.thedrum.com/news/2015/09/23/al-jazeera-set-cut-hundreds-jobs

Per The Guardian, they were going to make cuts across the board with Arabic getting the bulk of them, but due to AJAM getting low ratings, it was decided to just axe the whole operation

NY

NYTV 24 January 2016 7:14am

Here's an interesting read from CNNMoney on what ultimately brought down AJAM. It is very interesting http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/22/media/al-jazeera-america-what-went-wrong/index.html

RK

Rkolsen 24 January 2016 1:53pm

NYTV posted:

Here's an interesting read from CNNMoney on what ultimately brought down AJAM. It is very interesting http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/22/media/al-jazeera-america-what-went-wrong/index.html

Very sad especially how they came in unaware of the market place. But who would have guessed that cord cutting would gain significant traction three years ago?

NY

NYTV 25 January 2016 12:36am

Rkolsen posted:

NYTV posted:

Here's an interesting read from CNNMoney on what ultimately brought down AJAM. It is very interesting http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/22/media/al-jazeera-america-what-went-wrong/index.html

Very sad especially how they came in unaware of the market place. But who would have guessed that cord cutting would gain significant traction three years ago?

Yeah, but they didn't go into the market unaware, they were warned but didn't heed such warnings and look what happened. I believe the cord-cutting is why CBS decided to make their news channel CBSN online only.

CH

Charles 25 January 2016 1:34am

Rkolsen posted:

NYTV posted:

Here's an interesting read from CNNMoney on what ultimately brought down AJAM. It is very interesting http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/22/media/al-jazeera-america-what-went-wrong/index.html

Very sad especially how they came in unaware of the market place. But who would have guessed that cord cutting would gain significant traction three years ago?

Lots of people predicted that. That was already happening back then. AJ sabotaged all their online video-on-demand and AJE livestream growth that they built up for years just to appease the cable operators with the launch of AJAM. The small but growing and loyal following that AJE had in the US with its online stream was wiped away. Their highly watched AJE YouTube channel also went away, and AJAM was barred from posting video onto their own website because of all the draconian contracts they signed just to get AJAM onto American cable systems. That's not failing to be proactive enough online — that's an openly anti-digital strategy.

Last edited by Charles on 25 January 2016 1:50am

NY

NYTV 25 January 2016 4:22am

Charles posted:

Rkolsen posted:

NYTV posted:

Here's an interesting read from CNNMoney on what ultimately brought down AJAM. It is very interesting http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/22/media/al-jazeera-america-what-went-wrong/index.html

Very sad especially how they came in unaware of the market place. But who would have guessed that cord cutting would gain significant traction three years ago?

Lots of people predicted that. That was already happening back then. AJ sabotaged all their online video-on-demand and AJE livestream growth that they built up for years just to appease the cable operators with the launch of AJAM. The small but growing and loyal following that AJE had in the US with its online stream was wiped away. Their highly watched AJE YouTube channel also went away, and AJAM was barred from posting video onto their own website because of all the draconian contracts they signed just to get AJAM onto American cable systems. That's not failing to be proactive enough online — that's an openly anti-digital strategy.

And that anti-digital strategy cost them big. But those this mean that the AJE stream loses the geoblock?

RK

Rkolsen 25 January 2016 4:25am

NYTV posted:

Charles posted:

Rkolsen posted:

Very sad especially how they came in unaware of the market place. But who would have guessed that cord cutting would gain significant traction three years ago?

Lots of people predicted that. That was already happening back then. AJ sabotaged all their online video-on-demand and AJE livestream growth that they built up for years just to appease the cable operators with the launch of AJAM. The small but growing and loyal following that AJE had in the US with its online stream was wiped away. Their highly watched AJE YouTube channel also went away, and AJAM was barred from posting video onto their own website because of all the draconian contracts they signed just to get AJAM onto American cable systems. That's not failing to be proactive enough online — that's an openly anti-digital strategy.

And that anti-digital strategy cost them big. But those this mean that the AJE stream loses the geoblock?

I hope so. I've had to use a VPN just to read an article / watch a video that was published on AJE but I couldn't even view the page on the US' version of AlJazeera.com

Aljazeera America is shutting down April 30

New York Based channel is closing (January 2016)