Why Al Jazeera America failed

Why did Al Jazeera America news channel go belly-up, despite having less slant to its newscasts than Fox News?

The Qatar people pumping in the millions of dollars didn’t understand the American market. For one, the name alone put off cable companies and potential viewers, but Qatar was proud of it, and refused to change to something that wasn’t a buzzword for mistrust and hatred.

So major blocks of carriers refused to carry the channel.

At a time when CNN and Fox were drawing millions to watch the State of the Union coverage, Al Jazeera had about 70,000.

 

Slumping oil prices made the Mideast country that owned the channel nervous. They paid Al Gore $500 million for the channel but they couldn't fathom or overcome the inconvenient truths about America's cable news situation.

Lawsuits charging anti-Semitism and sexism didn’t help either.

As usual, when generals screw up, privates pay the price. About 700 will be out of work April 30.

To read the full article, click on  http://money.cnn.com/2016/01/22/media/al-jazeera-america-what-went-wrong/index.html