John Meehan Joins Al Jazeera America…

Politico’s Dylan Byers writes that former Thomson Reuters Producer John Meehan has been hired by Al Jazeera America…

Al Jazeera America has hired former Thomson Reuters producer John Meehan to serve as senior executive producer of the forthcoming channel’s financial and business coverage. Meehan will also serve as senior executive producer for the new business show hosted by former CNN chief business correspondent Ali Velshi.

“This is a really exciting opportunity to reinvent the notion of what business news coverage in America can be,” Meehan said in a statement. “Al Jazeera America’s business and financial coverage will be about the continuing economic challenges facing the American family today, rather than just the daily ups and downs of Wall Street and official statistics.”

Delays At Al Jazeera America?

The New York Post’s Claire Atkinson writes about things taking longer than planned to get All Jazeera America up and running…

Some close to the network are now whispering “summer” as a target date for a launch — with a few fearing the Qatari government-owned network may not be ready to roll until near Labor Day.

“This is not a ratings race,” said a source, “This is a get-on-the-air race. June is not going to happen. The best guess is August or September.”

International executive Ehab Al Shihabi and his staff are trying to hire a news boss and have reached out to a host of well-respected names, including former NBC News chief Steve Capus and former CNNers Jon Klein, David Bohrman and David Doss.

So far, no one has jumped at the offer and at least one executive said he was a bit squeamish about the source of the network money.

Network brass have named just two executives to the service, former CNN business journalist Ali Velshi, who will create a daily prime-time business show, and investigative reporter Ed Pound.

Al Jazeera persuaded Ken Ripley, Current TV’s former ad sales chief, to come aboard, The Post has learned, but is still without a permanent distribution chief to negotiate the critical carriage agreements.

Ali Velshi Joining Al Jazeera America…

From the “I never could have foreseen that” file, TVNewser’s Alex Weprin scoops that Ali Velshi is joining Al Jazeera America…

When he announced his departure, Velshi told TVNewser that he was leaving on great terms with CNN and wanted “to stretch some new muscles and grow something, and it appeals to my entrepreneurial side.” Al Jazeera is pouring millions of dollars into its new Al Jazeera America cable channel, essentially taking the bare bones structure and channel placement of Current TV and creating something new. Velshi is going to be a big part of that plan.

>Update: Velshi will develop and host a half-hour “magazine-style” show that will launch as a weekly program, with plans to expand to five days a week by the end of the year.

Shakeup At Al Jazeera London? Maybe Not So Much…

The Press Gazette’s Alan Selby writes about Al Jazeera pushback on yesterday’s story in The Evening Standard…

But Al Jazeera said there was “no truth” in the suggestion jobs are under threat, and insisted it is planning a large expansion of its UK arm before it moves into new offices in the Shard in a year’s time.

A spokesman said: “The last thing we’re looking to do is get rid of people.”

Al Jazeera said the staff involved would be taking part in temporary placements, and that this was commonplace.

“There are always movement between staff, but there are no plans to send people there and then they go back to the UK and they have no jobs… we always have people coming from London to Dohar.”

Shakeup at Al Jazeera London…

The Evening Standard writes about some apparently turbulent changes coming to All Jazeera’s London Bureau…

Braziers and picket lines at the ready! Staff at Al Jazeera English TV’s Broadcast Centre, based in Knightsbridge, are reacting with shock to the announcement that London news programming is being wound down and that they have barely 10 days to move to Doha, Qatar.

Roughly 15 to 20 programme editors, producers and other output staff are immediately affected and learned of their fate courtesy of a brusque email from the network’s director of news, Salah Negm. The Broadcast Centre opened in 2006, and will continue to operate. However, many staff inside are now in receipt of the email telling them that they have to uproot themselves for three months on April 7 and head to the Middle East — and with no guarantee that their jobs will still be there when they return.

“Staff are utterly appalled,” says my source at the National Union of Journalists. “They had thought that they would be moving from Knightsbridge to The Shard — not the desert. We’ve never had so many membership applications in such a short time.”

Oh…BS!

Radar Online’s Jen Heger writes that Ann Curry may jump to Al Jazeera…

“Ann has had informal talks about working for the new Al Jazeera operation in America which is expected to formally launch later this year,” a source tells Radar. “She’s extremely interested in what the network will be doing in the U.S. and has always held their reporting in high regard. She’s still in talks with CNN, but the opportunity of being front and center at the launch of a new international news channel, especially one that promises to shake up and challenge existing reporting of world events, is something that greatly appeals to her.”

Up until now Radar Online’s prognostications on the Curry saga have at least had the tinge of believability to them. Until now. Al Jazeera? For a “name” like Curry Al Jazeera would be career suicide in this country. The network has gained a reputation, justified or not. Anyone who joins will have to contend with that. The potential resume damage one could receieve as a result of joining Al Jazeera is much much greater for a “name” talent than one who is not a name. Curry and her agent should know this. Which is why I seriously want to call BS to this story.

Pondering Al Jazeera America: Another Angle

The Toronto Star has an Op-Ed from Tony Burman, the former head of Al Jazeera English, regarding the Al Jazeera/Current deal… (via DC Internationalist)

This sale is a huge gamble for Al Jazeera. Companies that refused to carry Al Jazeera for political reasons will be forced to distribute Al Jazeera America when it replaces Current TV. Time Warner Cable in New York City has already dropped Current TV and says it won’t broadcast Al Jazeera. One wonders what will happen to Al Jazeera America over the next few years when other cable and satellite contracts expire. There have also been suggestions it may have to end its popular online streaming in the U.S. to accommodate these contracts.

Al Jazeera’s hope, presumably, is that broad numbers of Americans will gradually be won over by the range and diversity of its news and programming. A large part of my role with Al Jazeera English, particularly in the U.S. and Canada, was to urge people to get past the post-Sept. 11 fear-mongering and appreciate the channel’s editorial accomplishments and numerous prestigious awards.

It was striking that, in 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to Qatar and asked to meet senior Al Jazeera officials. I was part of that meeting and her message was that the Obama administration regarded Al Jazeera as part of the “solution,” not the “problem” in the Middle East.

Al Jazeera’s challenge won’t be an easy one. My sense of Al Jazeera today is that it is becoming a more “top-down,” centrally driven news operation than ever before. All news programs and most editorial decisions now come out of Qatar.

Al Jazeera America will force it to change if it wants to succeed. For news channels to thrive in the U.S., America’s story must be “made in America.” Al Jazeera has time to turn it around before “the lights go on” in these 40 million homes, but not much time. The American TV marketplace waits for no one, and rarely grants a second chance.

Pondering Al Jazeera America From Outside America…

Al Arabiya has an uncredited article which examines the Al Jazeera purchase of Current from an outside the US perspective…or maybe I should be more accurate say a Saudi competitor of the Qatari network perspective…(via DC Internationalist)

Matthew Reed, a principal analyst at Informa Telecoms & Media in Dubai, said that Al Jazeera faces several challenges in its US push.

“It is quite a risky move,” Reed said of Al Jazeera’s acquisition of Current TV. “There are some negative perceptions about Al Jazeera in some quarters of the US. It’s hard to predict how distributors will react.”

How Al Jazeera fares politically and commercially are two separate issues, Reed said.

The U.S. television market is notoriously tough, and the business of making TV news is incredibly expensive. And so it remains to be seen whether Al Jazeera can sell enough adverts to justify even a fraction of its initial investment.

“[Television news] is a costly business, and competitive. And the media landscape is also changing… The way that people consume media is changing, and broadcasters are having to adapt,” Reed told Al Arabiya in an interview.

Yet the Qatari state-financed Al Jazeera is more concerned with politics than profits, said Mr. Reed.

“There’s no guarantee they will be commercially successful. But Al Jazeera is freer of those constraints than many other companies, because it’s basically financed by the state of Qatar,” he said.

“Al Jazeera is not a regular commercial broadcaster… In a way it’s a foreign-policy tool of Qatar,” he added. “Qatar wants to increase its own regional and international influence, and I think that is part of the explanation behind this move.”

Al Jazeera And The “Global South”

The Baltimore Sun’s David Zurawik revisits a piece on Al Jazeera he wrote last August. Recommended…

So, to those who wrote in response to my piece last week asking if I understood how biased Al Jazeera is. The answer is yes, and I wrote about it in August. You can read it below, along with two experts’ analyses of that point of view.

But you should know it’s not the kind of bias some fools are talking about when they recklessly throw around words like “terrorist” and “terrorism.”

The bias is toward a geographic orientation or consequent set of narratives described as “Global South.” And given U.S. history, it is one we desperately need to understand and think about if we are truly going to function globally in the new world order.

In some ways, it is a reaction to the history of “Global North” colonialism, which is the underpinning of the structure and the orientation of the BBC. Think of it as a counterbalance to that bias, particularly in the Middle East.

The Other Shoe?

The New York Post’s Linda Stasi writes about a post Al Jazeera announcement Current TV meeting…

But you won’t be getting that Middle East merriment until April, which is when the network says it will be ready to take over.

“Sometime within three months—no more, no less—we were told,” said the Current staffer.

One person at the meeting, who has already announced that she’s leaving, former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, tried to ask about severance packages for those who wouldn’t be staying.

“This isn’t the place to discuss this!” Hyatt barked at her.

“After that, everyone kept their questions pretty much to themselves,” according to the staff member.

Al Jazeera Buys (and Kills) Current TV…

The New York Times’ Brian Stelter writes about Al Jazeera buying Current TV in order to kill it and take over its airspace in cable. This may prove to be one of the smartest moves of 2013…if the cable nets keep it at Current’s 60 million subscriber level and it doesn’t drastically drop off.

“Al Jazeera is planning to invest significantly in building ‘Al Jazeera America,’ a network focused on international news for the American audience,” the Current chief executive Joel Hyatt said in an e-mail to staffers on Wednesday evening. Referring to Mr. Gore, he said, “Al and I will both serve on the advisory board of Al Jazeera America, and we look forward to helping build an important news network.”

The plan will bring Al Jazeera, which is financed by the government of Qatar, into closer competition with CNN and other news channels in the United States.

For Al Jazeera, the acquisition is a coming-of-age moment. A decade ago, the Arabic-language channel was reviled by American politicians for showing video tapes and messages from al Qaeda members and sympathizers. Now it is acquiring an American channel.

That sound of nervous hand wringing you hear is coming from Atlanta. I really really like this move because it will finally put pressure on CNN US to be more international looking than it has needed to be in the past in ways that BBC World News coming to just Time Warner Cable couldn’t achieve. Consider it an “international rear guard action” that the Time Warner news network previously didn’t have to contend with when the only competition it faced was the overwhelmingly domestic (and US politics) focused FNC and MSNBC.

How big a deal is this? It’s big enough that I have now added an Al Jazeera category to my blog posts…

Update: If you didn’t believe me that this news is a direct threat to CNN, I offer this proof.

Update 2: Said proof is meaningless. I keep forgetting TWC was spun off…