Reputation and reach will hinder Al Jazeera America
Article originally published on the Hanover website
Aiming to connect Americans with the ‘human stories at the heart of the news’ and ‘provide fact-based, unbiased, in-depth journalism’, Al Jazeera America launched in the US last night.
It goes without saying that Al Jazeera will have a tough time building its TV audience in the US. Over the past decade or so, the Qatari-based broadcaster has faced a number of reputational issues Stateside which including it being al-Qaeda’s preferred route for communicating video and audio messages with the outside world and a report suggesting that President George W Bush was considering bombing Al Jazeera’s Doha HQ at the height of the Iraqi insurgency in 2004.
Al Jazeera has also faced an onslaught from right-of-centre analysts via FOX News. Commenting on Al Jazeera America’s pending launch, FOX pundit and former White House staffer, James Pinkerton, went as far as airing his view that “many if not most Arabs probably support what bin Laden was trying to do in terms of killing Americans”.
Al Jazeera America has built a sizable social media audience of almost a quarter of a million.
Alongisde the reputational issues, Al Jazeera America launched with a major distribution issue too – it is not featured on any of the major cable operators, nor can its programming be viewed via its website, YouTube or other third-party digital platforms. Al Gore’s Current TV, which Al Jazeera purchased to gain a foothold in the US market, was dropped by Time Warner Cable shortly after its sale. Al Jazeera America’s website and its Facebook page have apps enabling viewers to lobby their TV providers to broadcast the channel but it’s total reach as of yesterday was just 48 million Americans
Before its first show aired, Al Jazeera America built a sizable social media audience of almost a quarter of a million (66,416 Facebook Likes, 133,025 Google+ follows, 44,255 on Twitter, 712 subscribers on YouTube). However, its relatively small broadcast reach will mean it struggles to take advantage of the dual screen trend that is providing broadcasters with a helpful social layer, maintaining their relevance in the digital age
On Twitter and Facebook, its profiles are verified, suggesting that it has likely grown its audience with the help of social media advertising. Although it’s off to a good start online, in terms of raw numbers, its Twitter audience is far behind CNN’s nine million and FOX News’ three million Twitter followers.
It should reconsider its decision to not broadcast via the web.
If Al Jazeera America is to become relevant and be watched by a large domestic audience, it must significantly differentiate its offering. It should reconsider its decision to not broadcast via the web, learn lessons from the Guardian’s online news ascent in America and invest more in citizen journalism. Al Jazeera America’s rivals such as CNN and NBC News certainly are. There’s currently no better way of providing ‘human stories’ than sourcing them from the humans themselves
