The Pan-Arab news channel Al-Jazeera may have fulfilled a long-held quest to reach tens of millions of US homes with its purchase of left-leaning Current TV. But its new audience immediately got a little smaller.

The nation’s second-largest TV operator, Time Warner Cable Inc, dropped Current after the deal was confirmed yesterday, a sign that the channel will have an uphill climb to expand its reach.

“Our agreement with Current has been terminated and we will no longer be carrying the service. We are removing the service as quickly as possible,” the company said in a statement.

Still, the acquisition of Current, the news network that was co-founded by former Vice-President Al Gore, boosts Al-Jazeera’s reach in the US beyond a few large US metropolitan areas including New York and Washington nearly nine-fold to about 40 million homes.

Gore confirmed the sale yesterday, saying in a statement that Al-Jazeera shares Current TV’s mission “to give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling“.

Al-Jazeera, owned by the government of Qatar, plans to gradually transform Current into a network called Al-Jazeera America by adding five to 10 new US bureaus beyond the five it has now and hiring more journalists. More than half of the content will be US news and the network will have its headquarters in New York, spokesperson Stan Collender said.

The English news network has a different news staff and a separate budget from the Arabic network, which was launched in 1996. They and the company’s growing stable of other Al-Jazeera branded channels are overseen by Sheik Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani, a member of Qatar’s royal family.

Current TV, founded in 2005 by former vice president Gore and Joel Hyatt, is expected to post $114 million in revenue in 2013, according to research firm SNL Kagan. The firm pegged the network’s cash flow at nearly $24 million a year.

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW