Al Jazeera America going dark after less than three years on-air

When fossil fuel-phobic Al Gore sold his "Current TV" network to Al Jazeera, we noted the oil-based irony and mourned the passing of our favorite primetime lineup. After all, Current had been home to crackpots like Keith Olbermann and Dating Game contestants like Jennifer Granholm for the better part of ten years. That kind of crazy is hard to come by and we knew that we wouldn't see anything quite like Current again. MSNBC does it's best to fill the void, but it's just not the same. Anyway, Al Jazeera America premiered a little over two years ago, and it was hailed by the left as a breath of fresh air. Finally, unbiased individuals would be doing serious news about serious international affairs. Folks like Hillary Clinton had long been suggesting that Al Jazeera's U.S. viewership was skyrocketing because unlike American media, they did "real news."

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Here she is in 2011, arguing that Americans simply can't get enough Al Jazeera:

Called it. https://t.co/8vRPGiTkDP

— Elliott Schwartz (@elliosch) January 13, 2016

Well, guess what. As always, Hillary was wrong. As the New York Times reports, Al Jazeera America is no more:

The cable news channel Al Jazeera America, which debuted in 2013 to great fanfare when it promised to cover American news soberly and seriously, will be shutting down by the end of April. The move was announced at a companywide meeting on Wednesday. In a memo to the staff, Al Jazeera America’s chief executive, Al Anstey, said the “decision by Al Jazeera America’s board is driven by the fact that our business model is simply not sustainable in light of the economic challenges in the U.S. media marketplace.”

If you think that sounds suspiciously like industry shorthand for "nobody watches us," you're right.

Al Jazeera America went on the air in August 2013 after Al Jazeera bought Al Gore’s Current TV for $500 million. It promised to be thoughtful and smart, free of the shouting arguments that have defined cable news in the United States over the last decade. But meaningful viewership never came, with prime-time ratings sometimes struggling to exceed 30,000 viewers.

Let's put that in perspective: Last year, MSNBC hit an eight-year low in terms of viewers. Its audience was considered microscopic and most of its primetime offerings were being crushed by reruns of Dukes of Hazzard - a show which was tormenting viewers with a really scary confederate flag. At the time, MSNBC was still managing to attract around 130,000 viewers at any given moment. Given the number of homes that had access to Al Jazeera America, 30,000 sets of eyeballs should have been easy. Heck, they should have been able to get to that number just by counting people whose TVs were stuck on the network because they'd lost their remotes. RIP, Al Jazeera America. We'll never forgive you for taking Current TV from us.
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