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Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

nytimes.com

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Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#81

Post by rogerbinns »

lbotos wrote: post #72
rogerbinns wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore are cable customers really Al Jazeera's target audience? I think it was purely a business decision. The way the US cable model works is the content providers get however many cents a month per subscriber that has the channel. The individual amount isn't great, but the cable company does all the hard work of collecting the money and giving you a single nice bigger cheque. It also helps with advertising,…

>The problem with Internet streaming is getting any demographic information Is this a problem in 2016? I'm pretty sure you can get _MORE_ data from internet tracking vs. otherwise.

The cable channel only decision was made in 2013. In 2016 they could just shut down Al Jazeera America, and stream the main channel. (It looks like that is what will happen.)

You do get data from internet tracking, but it is based around your activity and some correlation (eg geoip). Note that Al Jazeera would only get information about their own activity. There are various services that aggregate at a higher level, but they do cost money. I can't find any now, but there were a few companies that had a service you could ask about the current user and they would return likely demographic information.

That all matters if you are trying to sell the advertising yourself. If someone else higher in the user visibility chain sells the ads (eg google, facebook, yahoo) then they already have the comprehensive tracking and demographics. But advertising isn't that profitable and those guys will take a big chunk of the revenue, while you remain beholden to them.

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#82

Post by learc83 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #79
yellowstuff wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know a good way to prove that US media is not a government mouthpiece, but I don't think there is much evidence to support such a strong claim, whereas it is pretty easy to argue that RT is a government mouthpiece. EG: http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/12/the-truth-about-russia-to...

Just to be clear I never said RT wasn't a government mouthpiece. I said that some US news is "as bad as" them. I have no idea how exactly it works with CBS/NBC/60 minutes. Does the US government literally write the words? Do they just dictate what they should report on? Do they send them pre-produced bottled reports? It is unclear, but what is clear is the ultimate result: pure dripping pro-US government propaganda o…

I don't think we are watching the same news at all. CBS and NBC regularly have reports that the government would stop if they could.

>I said that some US news is "as bad as" them.

I've seen plenty of reports on NBC or CBS criticizing Obama (or Bush before him), have you ever seen a report that was critical of Putin on RT?

How would this even work. Do they switch stories depending on who is in power?

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#83

Post by huac »

yellowstuff wrote: post #77
Someone1234 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> RT is propaganda run by a government that has propaganda as its modus operendi; I wouldn't trust their weather reports. So like NBC nightly news? The US is full of what can only be described as US government propaganda, 60 minutes is a prime example. CBS and NBC are no better than RT unfortunately, they just often tell Americans what they want to hear so nobody bats an eyelid. AJ and BBC have their biases but at le…

I don't know a good way to prove that US media is not a government mouthpiece, but I don't think there is much evidence to support such a strong claim, whereas it is pretty easy to argue that RT is a government mouthpiece. EG: http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/12/the-truth-about-russia-to...

There's pretty good evidence that lots of American media outlets are government mouthpieces - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent for example

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#84

Post by dhimes »

ianphughes wrote: post #2

I was annoyed when this launched because it was no longer easy to get to the English language version of Al Jazeera even if you wanted to, unless you took steps to change your location.

Actually, in the US when they put up the aljazeera/america site they started automatically routing me away from aljazeera/english. I pointed this out via email, and said I preferred the English version (Europe slant vs American) and they put a link at the bottom of the page to allow people to choose the English site. So try them- they are (were? it was a while back) very responsive.

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#85

Post by Laaw »

surge wrote: post #45
wnevets wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Al Jazeera US was anything but a respectable news source the past several years.

It seemed far more accurate and reported on issues glossed over or ignored by other major networks.

Do you think you'd be able to detect every possible bias?

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#86

Post by brightball »

rogerbinns wrote: post #7

The article did not mention Al Jazeera deciding to remove their Internet streaming, and requiring that you can only view via your local cable provider. See this page with the big note to US people: http://www.aljazeera.com/watch_now/201146152255537258.html I used to check in on their coverage on the Roku channel, but they made a business decision to prevent that. I can understand their decision to make their success…

Whenever people talk about the money in college football right now, I generally tell them to blame Tivo (and subsequently Netflix). Tivo started it with the ability to record and watch later while fast forwarding through commercials. Netflix with it's mountains of commercial free content followed next.

That put a huge advertising premium on content that people NEED to watch live like sports or hit shows like Walking Dead that have community reactions as episodes air.

The reality for cord cutters and cable companies alike is that, if it weren't for ESPN I'd have no reason to have cable. It's the only reason I have a pay TV package.

When you break down the technology, that won't change anytime soon either.

With Netflix or other streaming services 50,000 TVs is 50,000 individual streaming sessions. With a broadcast 50,000 people watching the same thing is 1 broadcast. It's just a question of scalability that gets complicated if millions of people all want to watch the same thing at the exact same time.

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#87

Post by gotchange »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #16

This comes as absolutely no surprise at all. It doesn't matter if you are the most accurate, informed, respectable news source in the world, because almost no Americans know what Al Jazeera is, and the name evokes the image backdrop of a middle eastern city most Americans can't find on a map, discussing topics of primary interest to American Muslims and few else, while the female anchors are veiled. Not to mention it…

> the female anchors are veiled

Were all those anchors veiled women? Some? Few?

Because drawing from my experience with AJE, they usually hire non conservative dressed women to present the news and they only featured veiled women for their Arabic-speaking channels but to be honest not all of them wear the veil. They still pretend not to discriminate against non-Muslims or non conservative Muslims.

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#88

Post by snake_plissken »

Man this stinks. Al Jazeera America is reliable and has done some solid reporting over the years. It wasn't afraid to call a spade a spade. Next to BloombergTV it's the only news channel worth watching.

On a tin-foil hat aside, but the timing on this; coming a few weeks after they ran the story about performance enhancing drug use by some big name athletes...I can't help but think the two are somehow related.

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#89

Post by 13thLetter »

Someone1234 wrote: post #67
hackuser wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Russia Today (Though that's state sponsored so it might not be the best comparison) Al Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar. However, I agree with you that it's not a good comparision. BBC also is state sponsored, but generally considered to be trustworthy. RT is propaganda run by a government that has propaganda as its modus operendi; I wouldn't trust their weather reports.

> RT is propaganda run by a government that has propaganda as its modus operendi; I wouldn't trust their weather reports. So like NBC nightly news? The US is full of what can only be described as US government propaganda, 60 minutes is a prime example. CBS and NBC are no better than RT unfortunately, they just often tell Americans what they want to hear so nobody bats an eyelid. AJ and BBC have their biases but at le…

It's not so much that the news is a government mouthpiece, more that each network tends to report the news in a fashion that supports its political views: CNN, MSNBC, and the traditional alphabet networks on the left, Fox News on the right. (And, of course, these are American definitions of left and right, so feel free to map them to your nation of origin however you please.) If the network is simpatico to the party in power, they'll sound like government propagandists. If not, RT or Al-Jazeera will have nothing on how venomous they get.

To put it another way, imagine the Guardian vs. the Daily Mail, but on television instead. No one, I hope, would pick up a copy of those newspapers expecting the unbiased facts; same deal here.

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#90

Post by dhimes »

tptacek wrote: post #10
russnewcomer wrote: post #6

This is unfortunate but expected. Al Jazeera has a severely unfair reputation in America, and most people probably had no idea of the difference between AJ(Qatar) and AJ(America). Hopefully they will continue to have coverage in America, and this doesn't actually mean their total exit of America-based reporting.

I don't think AJ had much of a reputation at all in the US. I wouldn't even know where to find it.

It got pretty famous after 9/11. I even have their app. But I mentioned to some Christian conservative family members that if they really wanted to understand what was happening in the Middle East (this was when the Egyptian general, who was voted out of power, overthrew the elected government and took leadership again) they should try Al Jazeera.

Their response suggested that in their circles it was considered a very bad source of information. So at least among some groups it has a strong reputation.

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