[mouseboy33]

Hostage videos were aired Al Jazeera Arabic with great frequency back in the early 2000s following 9/11. Believe me it didnt go well. It sullied their reputation in North America. And unfortunately because of 9/11, the name of the channel didnt help. Every time one aired, immediately the video and channel were connected and were blamed as being a tool for the kidnappers. And it was seen as distressful to the families of those taken. And they didnt help themselves by defending it.

www.nbcnews.com 

Al-Jazeera shows U.S. hostage in Iraq
Al-Jazeera television broadcast a video Wednesday showing an American who had be…
  Source: www.nbcnews.com

english.alarabiya.net -

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404
  Source: english.alarabiya.net

edition.cnn.com 

CNN.com - Arab media urged to help save U.S. hostage - Jan 31, 2006
A day after a video of a U.S. journalist held hostage in Iraq aired on Al-Jazeer…
  Source: edition.cnn.com

www.cbc.ca 

Al-Jazeera show video of U.S. hostage in Iraq | CBC News
A video broadcast has been aired by Al-Jazeera television showing an American co…
  Source: www.cbc.ca

www.theguardian.com 

Al-Jazeera shows video of Iraq hostages | World news | The Guardian
A video showing the kidnapped British activist Norman Kember and three other wes…
  Source: www.theguardian.com

www.wfmynews2.com 

Access Denied

  Source: www.wfmynews2.com

www.smh.com.au 

Al-Jazeera airs video of German hostage
Al-Jazeera has broadcast a video of a Westerner it said was a German hostage sti…
  Source: www.smh.com.au

www.nytimes.com 

U.S. hostage in Iraq makes appeal in video - The New York Times
Skip to contentSkip to site indexSearch & Section NavigationSection Navigati…
  Source: www.nytimes.com

www.gainesville.com 

Group releases hostage video
Skip to main content #navWrapContainer{border-bottom:1px solid #e0e0e0;position:…
  Source: eu.gainesville.com

[LargelyALurker]

Apologies for doubting you mouseboy33, thanks for coming back with detailed information to back it up!

[mouseboy33]

No worries. I just remember here in North America, AlJazeera Arabic was always mentioned in connection with those videos and i distinctly remember news panels discussions about the merits of them broadcasting them continuously. They were de-rided for being mouthpiece. So for the most part their name is basically mud here. Could it be wearing away, possibly, 20 years on. But its a news operation from the middle that is viewed with suspicion in the wider populace. You saw how quickly CNNs cachet was eroded by Trumpers. So it stands to reason AJ and AJE and its American outlet didnt stand a chance.


A couple of articles about the shutdown and they even were told to change the channel name and they refused, so they kinda shot themselves in foot.
money.cnn.com ?

The final days of Al Jazeera America
Was Al Jazeera America doomed? A combination of ignorance and irrationality on t…
  Source: money.cnn.com

There were still other obstacles. It is now conventional wisdom among employees, according to those interviewed for this story, that Al Jazeera America should have changed its name.

"Even before the launch, everyone in the newsroom said, change the name," one AJAM anchor said. "But they" — in Doha — "were too proud of it. They didn't listen to people who knew the U.S. market."

Al Shihabi, the man appointed to run AJAM, told skeptics that his research supported the name and showed it was not a hindrance. But the network was clearly sensitive about the concerns. A pamphlet that circulated among staffers one month before launch focused on AJAM's "brand messaging." When it came to the new channel's voice, employees were urged to "make it American."

www.washingtonpost.com 

fortune.com 

Al Jazeera America Was Doomed From the Beginning | Fortune
The U.S. version of the Qatar-based network never managed to find an audience
  Source: fortune.com

The failure of AJAM has little to do with the actual quality of the company’s journalistic work, and everything to do with changing industry economics, restrictive distribution agreements, and internal turmoil. And at a time when ISIL and anti-Islamic sentiment is such an issue, the name of the channel probably didn’t help.
“From the start, employees complained vociferously that network executives were paralyzed by fear, believing they had to avoid all hints of bias and opinion in order to steer clear of what these executives regarded as the lethal stench of the Al Jazeera brand for American audiences. This turned much of the network into a diluted, extra-fearful version of CNN.”

slate.com 

Why Al Jazeera English was destined to fail.
Al Jazeera America never had a chance. Having struggled in vain to attract an au…
  Source: slate.com

Some of the trouble undoubtedly boiled down to its name. Many Americans were never going to watch a channel created by Al Jazeera, the media network owned by the Qatari government with a reputation (fair or not) for being a smidgen hostile to the U.S.

[Stgreen]

I remember seeing a study shortly before AJAM launched (full disclosure: I worked for AJE in 2013, we ended up receiving AJAM free on satellite in Doha) where they showed people the same footage from AJE, but one group saw it with a CNN logo, another with an Al Jazeera logo - no prizes for how the two networks were seen, despite Al Jazeera presenting good coverage at the time.

I feel like AJAM might have been a success were it not for the bullying and poor management, and as a result, Al Jazeera Turk, Al Jazeera Francais and Al Jazeera UK were quietly shelved (AJT continued as a website for a while but eventually disappeared).

Out of the spinoff channels, only Al Jazeera Balkans is still going, and that's due to having its own voice and point of view - in editorial meetings they were seen as the distant cousin in comparison to the other bureaus.

[sky303]

I liked AJAM as a channel it was one of the best not big 3 news channels to happen in the US, but yeah it was probably hard for it to exist. The name Al Jazeera didn't help it at all, they should have gone with a different name. I think it would have still been on the air if it had. It would have had the advantage of not having to worry as much as commercial venture compared to others. The bullying hopefully would have been dealt with too, but for the average person the name really didn't help. I liked the content and didn't care about the name, but even Russia Today was smart enough to not go by that name on the air after awhile and just went by RT and RT America in the US. I can also understand their ego, they are proud of the name and would believe that it wouldn't matter, but yeah I think was a factor. In the ratings front, it seems the US market prefers their news channels to tell them what they think about the news than simple news.

[Charles]

The biggest tarnish to AJ’s brand in the U.S. by far wasn’t just the hostage videos – it was the Bin Laden tapes that AJA periodically received and aired in the months and years after 9/11. And while Al Jazeera still certainly had a perception issue, I don’t know if it was as severe as people thought. By 2013, Al Jazeera had already developed a pretty reputable perception among Anglophone news junkies and power brokers.

I think the restrictive carriage deals were really what killed AJAM. Current TV had awful channel number placement and was a 4:3 signal. I also believe the agreements were so restrictive that AJAM couldn’t even post video online. Their website and social media profiles had no video. I think Al Jazeera even had to block the AJE livestream in the U.S. for a while. (I was living in France for part of that time, so my memory is a little hazy on when that stopped).

I also think even 2013 was too late to try to jump into the conventional U.S. cable news model. At best, AJAM was going to pull away a fraction of viewers from CNN and MSNBC. Trying to attract new viewers to traditional media is very difficult. NewsNation is a completely different thing, but they are having an equally challenging time trying to get anybody to watch.

I can’t help but wonder if Al Jazeera would have better success now launching a lower budget, streaming-only American channel not unlike what’s on NBC News Now and CBSN.

[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

[sky303]

The biggest tarnish to AJ’s brand in the U.S. by far wasn’t just the hostage videos – it was the Bin Laden tapes that AJA periodically received and aired in the months and years after 9/11. And while Al Jazeera still certainly had a perception issue, I don’t know if it was as severe as people thought. By 2013, Al Jazeera had already developed a pretty reputable perception among Anglophone news junkies and power brokers.

I think the restrictive carriage deals were really what killed AJAM. Current TV had awful channel number placement and was a 4:3 signal. I also believe the agreements were so restrictive that AJAM couldn’t even post video online. Their website and social media profiles had no video. I think Al Jazeera even had to block the AJE livestream in the U.S. for a while. (I was living in France for part of that time, so my memory is a little hazy on when that stopped).

I also think even 2013 was too late to try to jump into the conventional U.S. cable news model. At best, AJAM was going to pull away a fraction of viewers from CNN and MSNBC. Trying to attract new viewers to traditional media is very difficult. NewsNation is a completely different thing, but they are having an equally challenging time trying to get anybody to watch.

I can’t help but wonder if Al Jazeera would have better success now launching a lower budget, streaming-only American channel not unlike what’s on NBC News Now and CBSN.

My TV service got AJAM in HD in January 2014, but I don't think it ever ended up being widespread.  Yeah, they geo blocked Al Jazerra English until after the channel shut down, they also stopped providing their feeds to channels like MHZ World View.

[Charles]

My TV service got AJAM in HD in January 2014, but I don't think it ever ended up being widespread.  Yeah, they geo blocked Al Jazerra English until after the channel shut down, they also stopped providing their feeds to channels like MHZ World View.

Interesting. I had no idea they had an HD version. When AJAM was on the air, I had Comcast in three different states (yes, I moved a lot!) and I only ever had the crummy SD feed.

[sky303]

Yeah, I don't think it went far spread, some Comcast systems were slowly adding it , I think.  I know Verizon Fios had it pretty early on too. 

Here's how it looked in HD, one of my old shots. They had to keep things 4:3 safe.