What Cost $34,000 Each?

I was interested today to see the news the Al Jazeera America is cutting staff and scaling back its activities.  After all, it was not all that long ago that the cable network was born when the backers in the Middle East bought the failing Current TV network from Al Gore and his partners for half a billion dollars.  Since then, Al Jazeera opened numerous offices around the country and hired a great many staff to support its news operations.  Ratings, however, have been worse than a disaster.  Al Jazeera is drawing roughly fifteen thousand viewers according to the ratings.  While it is hard to believe that this could happen, the ratings for Al Jazeera are even lower than the abysmal numbers achieved by Current TV when Gore was involved.

Put all of this together and you find that the owners of Al Jazeera paid roughly $34,000 for each viewer that they now have, and that does not include all the millions that they have since spent on operations.  No wonder they are cutting back. 

Personally, I think this is a great outcome with one caveat.  I like the idea of some oil rich sheiks wasting over half a billion dollars on a silly scheme that never had any chance of success.  There is just no market in America for news from Al Jazeera.  My only regret is that Al Gore and his friends got to bail out their failed venture in TV liberalism by selling it to even more brain dead folks.