Al Jazeera America to close down

” Since its launch in 2013, the work done by the team at Al Jazeera America has been recognised with almost every major award an American news organization can receive”.

“I know the closure of AJAM will be a massive disappointment for everyone here who has worked tirelessly for our long-term future”, he continued, using the company acronym. The announcement was made in an email from AJAM CEO Al Anstey to staff, of which hundreds are expected to lose their jobs.

I greatly respect the unrivalled commitment and excellent work of our team, which has created great journalism. Time Warner Cable Inc TWC.N and AT&T Inc T.N argued that they had contracted with Current TV, not Al Jazeera, and therefore were not obligated to carry the network.

According to Paul Farhi, a media reporter at the Washington Post, the TV channel is available in approximately 64 million households, which is not that much when comparing to its competitors that have around one more third of subscribers.

The station has consistently struggled for ratings since its launch, with the New York Times reporting its prime-time ratings sometimes struggled “to exceed 30,000 viewers”. Fully distributed networks typically reach 90 million homes or more.

Al Jazeera America never publicly released ratings information.

News network Al Jazeera America is shutting down after just two-and-a-half years on air, it was announced on Wednesday.

Al Jazeera’s Arabic branch will continue to operate in the Middle East, where it is a popular channel with a large viewer base. In fact, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, a USA missile hit Al Jazeera’s Baghdad office, killing a reporter and injuring another, leading to accusations that the U.S. had targeted the office.

West added that “the business model was the largess of the government of Qatar, and when oil prices fell, they had no backup plan”.

Within a few months of entering into the news industry, Al Jazeera America’s profiles quickly rose among consumers and peers in the industry – in the light of its unrivaled journalism.