[Stooky Bill]

I'd doubt theyd go through the trouble of creating Al Jazeera America and then shut the whole thing down after 3 years if it was all about soft power. It was a financial disaster. What a fiasco that was. I think they arent just going to throw money away if its not needed.  And they failed to get the AJE carriage on many cable systems in the US. 

It was all about expansion and getting the word of Al Jazeera out there to different areas to appeal to different audiences. They opened other regional versions around that time - Balkans, Turkey and they were planning a UK variant of AJE. 

They never expected to make any money out of it, they've never marketed their channels to advertisers. I think AJA have a bit but AJE has always had just a few, very odd adverts (it's difficult to find advertisers for an international channel, but the only one they had for years was for an Aluminium Smelter)

You don't open an international news channel for the money, around the time AJE launched others did the same thing - RT, France 24 and more recently TRT. They were all government funded, all for reasons other than making money


Incidently, even though AJA did show hostage videos, and things like Bin Ladens messages, I'm certain it never showed a beheading.

You are right in the name being mud in the US, part of the reason the Washington centre of AJE was delayed is because they had problems finding contractors to fit it out

Of course the Bin Laden videos were much derided at the time, but it didn't stop every other news channel reshowing them. The fact that he/they went to the AJ was just because it was the biggest, nearest most influencial channel