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Wednesday, January 13, 2016

In Case You Missed It: Bye Bye al Jazeera America

Al Jazeera America is closing down.  The rarely watched cable channel made the announcement today.  It began broadcasting when its Qatari backers paid Al Gore and company half a billion dollars to buy Current TV (which no one watched either) and renamed it Al Jazeera America.  Then they spent millions getting "talent" from places like CNN and MSNBC (which no one watches) and tried to gather an audience.  It did not work.  According to the ratings, on most  nights the network did not draw an audience of more than 20,000 viewers.  Those numbers are tiny.  There is no way that the network could survive.

I wonder who will buy the network now that it is available.  Maybe there could be a social media channel that plays youtube videos all the time (subject to prior review).  It would be extremely low cost, and it would probably get higher ratings.  Of course, someone would have to warn Hillary Clinton in case she is still pushing the idea that there may be terrorist attacks as a result of the videos.




 

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