Network will be broadcast across nearly 50m homes in the US on Tuesday with ambitious effort to provide quality in-depth content
In a 24-hour cable news world where sensationalist reporting, warring talking-heads and shrinking staff reign supreme, Al Jazeera America is launching an ambitious effort to provide quality, in-depth content on Tuesday.
"There will be less opinion, less yelling and fewer celebrity sightings," the channel's acting chief executive, Ehab al-Shihabi, told reporters on a conference call last week. If the operation fulfills this claim, it will be sitting opposite the popular networks who have made their millions on this formula.
Al Jazeera America will be available to nearly half of the country's 100 million television subscribers on Tuesday afternoon when it overtakes Current TV's distribution network, which it acquired in January for $500m. By taking over the station, Al Jazeera America is susceptible to the risks of having a high-numbered channel far from its competitors grouped together in the lower, more accessible, digits.
American cable companies have been reluctant to include Al Jazeera in their television packages, because of what some commentators call an "anti-American" bias. Marwan Bishara, one of the network's most prominent journalists, voiced fears that the network will sacrifice its bold approach to assuage these criticisms in an extensive email sent to company executives in June.
It also has to let go of Al Jazeera English, currently available to a small amount of US cable subscribers and to stream online until Tuesday. During crises in the Middle East, the channel and online stream are one of the few resources Americans have providing live, extensive coverage of events.
During the Arab Spring, the live stream had more than 1.6m views and the network was endorsed by Hillary Clinton, then the US secretary of state, who called its coverage "real news."
This service will be missed as events continue to unfold in Egypt, which has seen violent unrest since president Mohammed Morsi was ousted in July.
In an era of rapidly declining journalism jobs and dismal news profits, the network has built up an unusually large outfit of 900 employees – 400 of whom are on the news team – an extensive network of freelancers and 12 US bureaus, with the potential for more. This is made possible by the oil-rich Qatar government, which funds the news agency.
Al Jazeera representatives have said the American audience is interested in a more substantive 24-hour news network and are promising content that does just that.
With only six minutes of commercials per hour – far less than the usual 16 on most US networks – Al Jazeera America will feature documentary films, a hearty online news section and a 16-person investigative reporting team. The latter is particularly unique in a country where the archetype of 24-hour cable news – CNN – recently dissolved its entire investigate team.
The beta-version of their news site on Monday featured stories on Egypt, Guantanamo Bay and farm workers in Washington– the final of which has been subject to little media coverage. Al-Shihabi and company representatives have said that the intent of Al Jazeera is to create journalism in the public interest instead of "infotainment."
