I sampled Al Jazeera America (until I changed my cable package and it is no longer included) and liked what I saw. It seemed almost like the B.B.C. in tone. But apparently I was (nearly) alone: it is fizzling in the United States so badly it’s ratings reportedly resemble those of a public access channel:
After just two months on the air, Al Jazeera America is losing ground in the US.
The US offshoot of the Mideast news outfit managed fewer than half of the viewers who tuned in to its predecessor, Al Gore’s Current TV.
Al Jazeera America has averaged just 13,000 viewers a day since its Aug. 20 launch — on par with a public access channel. In the 25- to 54-year-old audience sought by advertisers, it drew 5,000 viewers.
The ratings are so low, they are considered a “scratch” and aren’t reported by Nielsen.“We are making large investments in programming and marketing,” an Al Jazeera America spokesperson said Sunday.
By comparison, 31,000 viewers tuned into Current TV a year ago.
Currently, Al Jazeera America is carried in about 44 million US households. The network lost millions of households when Time Warner Cable dropped its predecessor Current TV before Al Jazeera America got off the ground.
The No. 2 cable provider has agreed to make Al Jazeera America available in about 10 million homes. Despite that, the news channel is the smallest of fry. Last Thursday, Even with Time Warner Cable on board, Al Jazeera America has a long way to go in its mission to compete with mainstream rivals. Leader Fox News drew 353,000 total viewers, while CNN notched 174,000 and MSNBC grabbed 121,000.
It could be a long haul for Al Jazeera America for several reasons: 1. To many, the name still conjures up images of a news outfit that was Al Qaeda’s favorite infooutlet. 2. It’ll need better cable saturation. 3. The B.B.C. model of news has, quite sadly, been supplanted in the United States as trending continues to be towards reporting that provides viewers a reaffirmation of their existing political opinions and those who try to avoid that game (such as CNN) suffer in terms of viewership. 4. No anchor personality in era where personality means a great deal. 5. Its thoughtful longer pieces are fewer and fewer now on the two ideological-based news channels, Fox News and MSNBC.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.