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New York Times: Al Jazeera Acquires Current TV (http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/al-jazeera-said-to-be-acquiring-current-tv/?partner=rss&emc=rss&smid=tw-nytimes)

Cue right-wing insanity.

Ahahahah, that owns.

Time Warner Cable already announced they would stop carrying Current TV due to this deal (their excuse is "removing channels with low ratings" which the ownership change allows them to do without paying a contract penalty).

Actually its interesting to see a different perspective  :grin: .  Although I doubt a lot of carriers will carry this channel and like Time Warner more than a few will drop it. 

Tweet from a reporter I once worked with in Sydney, who now works for Al Jazeera English @ajecathturner:

I very much enjoy AJ's coverage, but I can't help but think this will be universal and they're not going to get a whole lot for their purchase.

Fucking with big Arab money in this way kinda raises the hair on the back of my neck.

What?

I don't watch any news networks, so who cares. Now if AJ buys ESPN, it's time to start a crusade!

I dunno, we're trying to screw them out of a lot of money (not that we dont already do that in many ways) along with taking away free speech privileges here.  You dont think that would piss 'em, their board, and their viewers off?
Big moves like this are essentially sabre-rattles at the corporate scale.  I'm saying I'd prefer not to sabre-rattle at the corporate scale.

Follow fundamentalist funding for more reasoning.

Either way it's a cockstab move and we shouldn't do it.  More deal particulars (of note, Al Gore is now $100m richer):


Uhh, why is this in 'serious business' btw?  This needs to be in politics.  

edit: More juiciness,

wut?

"We" aren't screwing with them.  Who the hell is "we"?  TWC made a business decision.  A cowardly one that may not work out the way they think but it's not to fuck with Arabs or whatever.  As for the 1st Amendment I'll just wait for one of the in-house lawyers to help you out.

This is going well.

I'm surprised this wasn't immediately moved to Politics.   :oh_i_see:

One media company buying another really doesn't strike me as political.

But they are turrrrrirrrrisssts.

Oh, right. Of course, how silly of me.

I could care less because I'm perfectly capable of getting the news I need, but Major multinational  newsmedia conglomerates playing musical chairs with eachother is not political at all?   :awesome_for_real:

That's like saying Murdoch has no agenda.

Regardless it's a blow to progressives who wanted better news.

Also Al Jazerah sounds an awful lot like Al Qaeda.

No more than Al Jolson or All State.

Most progressives I know watch AJ for news anyways.

I think you have some massive misconceptions about AJ.

You still haven't... really... explained at all who "we" is or anything else.

Seriously.... What the fuck are you babbling about?

You're in good hands with Al Jazeera.

You're supposed to guess.

Does anyone actually watch Current TV? So TWC goes 'great , ownership changed we can get out of paying fees for this shitty channel' and they're supposed to not do this because we might offend the Arabs? Because they like us so much already?

Watching the reaction of both the lunatic left and right to this will be more amusing than anything actually on Current TV right now.

No, but the conversation surrounding said acquisition was 100% going to be.   :why_so_serious:

Yes.  And since you opened up with stupid, I'm going to assume the rest is too.

I only seem to have Current TV in SD so it looks like it straight out of the 80s.  A lot of the production value is pretty low from what I've seen.  They also have that dickhole Keith Olbermann

I think it's just nice timing for TWC. They get to ditch a low rating channel and get a bit of a right wing dogwhistle boon from it.

I like AJ's coverage. I actually find them more balanced than the slanted shit that passes for "news" on the U.S.-branded channels.

It's so cute when you ferigners think we mean that shit applies to anyone not-white.

Can you not tell the difference between literally and generally or did you just login to insult someone? I usually don't care but the inanity of this post bugs me.

  (some Reuters article that took all of 30 seconds to find)

I know it won't fit into most people's conspiracy theories about the right and big business but if Al Jazeera or Current TV or whatever had decent ratings TWC would pimp the shit out of it if they could make money. Christ the channel could be called 'TWC is a bunch of fucktards' and if it was profitable they wouldn't fucking care. Big business is evil and only cares about the dollar remember? Or they only care about white people..I forget...

What bothers me most is people who haven't watched AJ and immediately assume all sorts of stuff about it, when in fact its a professional institution on par with the BBC, doing journalism of quality the US hasn't delivered since the 70s.

I wouldn't be surprised if half the reason Current sucked was due to underfunding, the other half being Olberman. It'll be interesting if it thrives under AJ. My only worry is that commentators like TYT will now be lumped in with 'crazy arab people' in the popular mindset, simply due to the xenophobia of the average American viewer.

TWC has no idea if AJ will make them money or not at this point but I would guess it's going to get higher ratings than Current did.

Quick, name the largest single investor in NewsCorp.  Hint: It's not Rupert Murdoch.  If Al Jazeera had named themselves 'Stuff we heard' and gotten some lilly white frontman, they wouldn't have a credibility problem with Americans.

--Dave

It's not?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/8841452/Top-ten-News-Corp-voting-shareholders.html

Voting vs Financial.

Financial shareholder dude is some saudi prince, as I recall.

but.. still.. so?

How naïve.

Voting shares aren't the only kind.

Please explain.

No, but those are the shares that control the company.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Corporation_takeover_bid_for_BSkyB

Murdoch owns only 1.34% directly, vs 7% for the saudi prince that has been bankrolling him since before he changed citizenship in order to build his US networks.

If a Saudi prince was the largest single shareholder in MSNBC, we would never hear the end of it.  Yet very few Fox viewers would have any idea about Newscorp.

--Dave

What does this have to do with this case?

Yes, shit CAN have political implications especially involving regulation and monopolistic crap.. but we aren't talking about that sort of thing in this case. One media company buying another isn't necessarily inherently political, was my point.

It is indeed inherently political when in the end TWC will have to settle for a lesser per viewer fee to charge AJ-English after pretty much every other carrier already has a deal with AJ's new network AJ-America.  Everything I've read so far pretty much paints TWC as a laughing stock right now, especially with business.

Since TWC axed current and its channel intentionally AJ only really has a station and its staff right now, and nowhere to broadcast.  Had TWC simply smiled and took the "filthy brown Arab's" money you'd be watching AJ-English right now while AJ got their American network up and functional.

So yes, it's political.  And yah, dont be naive.

Do I really care?  No.  I don't even use Time Warner.  But it still makes an extremely large American conglomerate look bad and keeps a station everyone wants to see (AJ-English) in limbo.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/03/time-warner-cable-al-jazeera-america_n_2404879.html

Do you think Rupert picks up when the prince calls?

TWC's dicision to not carry it is indeed "politiical".

AJ buying CurrentTV is not. That is what I was referring to all the way back up there.

Wasn't Olberman shitcanned months ago?

Way back in March.

Olbermann got fired for the umpteenth and likely final time. It was a combination of his well known tendency to be a complete prick who is nearly impossible to work with, and Current TV having literally public TV quality equipment and staff. The heating/cooling didn't work, feeds cut out suddenly, the set was cheap as shit even after he threw a fit and had it changed, the production was awful, and the lights went out during a live broadcast more than once (IIRC Keith actually had a candle brought out and continued on once, which pissed his bosses off). Keith likely expected too much going from MSNBC which is flush with money and the best production/technology/sets in the business (Fox is arguably the most cheap/chintzy looking news channel in the big 3) to a network that was barely surviving (and dropped what amounted to their whole year's production budget on his overpriced contract) but Current really was clownshoes.

Keith will likely never be hired to do political TV ever again. He has burned every single bridge he could burn, and even when some places built new ones he burnt those too and pissed on the ashes. He's toxic, and it looks like he's done with major political talk anyway since he seems to be happy just writing MLB blogs. Zucker apparently likes him still and he's taking over CNN, and I STILL don't think they'd feign to hire him despite how hilarious it would be to watch Erick Son of Erick respond to a guy everyone in the biz hates waltzing back in to a contract that'd likely dwarf his.

But anyway, fun fact: During the early part of the Iraq invasion/war Fox had the fewest field reporters of any news network over there, and one of their major ones (Geraldo) got kicked the fuck out of the country for giving away troop positions. To get their awesome war roll footage they had to buy it from other places...can you guess who they bought the bulk of that footage from? You get 3 guesses and the first two don't count.

MrBloodworth?

Oh well played.  That was truly clever.