Al Jazeera America Details Plans for Detroit
Al Jazeera America will take office space for up to a half-dozen staffers in downtown Detroit — management says it’s strongly eyeing the historic Guardian Building — before a late-summer national launch.
The new cable network, which is separate from its Arabic-language counterpart in the Mideast, will be staffed by Americans and aimed at a U.S. audience with domestic news coverage. It will air on the former Current TV channel, which had been home to ex-Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s left-leaning political talk show.
Executives from the fledgling network described their plans during an interview with Crain’s on Thursday as part of New York City-based Al Jazeera America’s outreach campaign in a dozen cities targeted for news bureaus.
They said they also have looked at the David Stott and Penobscot buildings, but have not yet signed a lease. The space will be both for offices and facilities capable of television broadcasts.
The local office will have four to six staffers, a pool of freelancers and a branded Al Jazeera America vehicle. Two Detroit employees are in the process of being hired, but no names were disclosed.
The bureaus will be staffed by editorial employees, not sales staff, said Ehab Al Shihabi, executive director of international operations for Al Jazeera and the man tasked with launching Al Jazeera America.
Al Jazeera America has a total planned headcount of about 300, and plans to launch an internship program.
In its corporate structure, the network is a sibling of the Arabic-language Al Jazeera satellite news network in Doha, Qatar.
It picked Detroit because of news value, not specifically because of the area’s large Arab-American population or the potential advertising dollars from the three local automakers, executives said.
In fact, the Arab-American population didn’t come up in discussion when Detroit was picked as a bureau location, said Heather Allan, chief of news gathering for Al Jazeera English.
Al Jazeera America will air original content, with overseas news provided by Qatar-based sister channel Al Jazeera International (which is transitioning in name from the current Al Jazeera English).
The new channel has launched a “heavy, intensive outreach” tour of its bureau cities, meeting with local civic, business, media and political leaders and groups. That includes the three Detroit automakers, which the channel is expected to target for advertising
“Our intention is to cover the Main Street stories,” Al Shihabi said. “We don’t believe there is a channel covering the American Main Street.”
The new network will air a daily prime-time business show that will focus on ground-level interaction rather solely concentrating on executives, analysts and other elites, said the to-be-named show’s host, Ali Velshi, former CNN chief business correspondent and anchor of “Your Money.”
Emphasis will be placed on long-form and investigative reporting and grassroots-based coverage of domestic news, including lifestyle and cultural topics, Al Shihabi said.
What the network won’t engage in, he said, is ideologically based opinion-slinging and celebrity gossip. The network has paid for research that shows there’s a news audience for a network that avoids those things, he added.
“We are not in the infotainment business,” he said.
The new network will compete directly with CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC and the BBC World News, which also is seeking a larger American audience. None of those outlets have a Detroit bureau.
The network hasn’t disclosed all of its intended 12 U.S bureaus, but Politico.com reported Friday that the list includes Detroit, New York, Washington, D.C., Miami, Chicago, New Orleans, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Nashville, Tenn.
How much advertising support Al Jazeera America receives remains to be seen. Network executives said they have been in talks with Detroit’s three automakers, who have not committed to any spending on the channel.
“We have no plans to advertise on Al Jazeera America at this time; however, they have met with us to discuss opportunities,” said Ryndee Carney, manager of cross-brand communications for General Motors Co., via email.
The channel can be self-sustaining with its planned six to eight minutes of advertising per hour, compared to 15 minutes for the other cable news outlets, Al Shihabi said. Al Jazeera America can do that and still maintain profitability, he said.
The channel’s name is a concern.
The original Arabic-language Al Jazeera, which is aimed at a Middle Eastern audience, has been accused of anti-American and anti-Israeli bias, and of being a mouthpiece of terrorist propaganda such as al-Qaida videos from Osama bin Laden aired by the network in the 2000s. Other critics say the network, which has been on the air since 1996, is too pro-Western.
Al Jazeera America’s leadership said it has a multi-pronged strategy for overcoming any stigma, with the foremost tactic being that the network will be non-ideological journalism, with editorial independence, run by Americans for a U.S. audience.
“It’s an American channel,” Al Shihabi said. “We are not worried about those perceptions.”
Harvey Rabinowitz, a partner at Bloomfield Hills-based media buying agency Media … Period, said the channel’s name likely will scare off advertisers.
“You have this albatross hanging over your head. I don’t know how you get past it. It doesn’t matter (about) the content. It’s the name that’s going to get the backlash,” he said.
Al Shihabi said the network is hiring veteran U.S. journalists and will let potential viewers know about Al Jazeera’s slew of notable journalism honors, which in 2012 included a George Foster Peabody Award, a George Polk Award and prizes from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Foundation, Columbia University and Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.
Along with its city-by-city outreach meetings, it also will publicize compliments for the network from Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Colin Powell, he said.
Al Jazeera on Jan. 2 announced it had bought Current TV, the San Francisco-based progressive cable channel co-founded in 2005 by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. Current TV reaches about 40 million U.S. homes.
Al Jazeera reportedly paid $500 million for the channel, which struggled mightily with ratings and said in October it was looking for a buyer.
Immediately after the sale announcement, Time Warner dropped Current TV but has said it will consider carrying Al Jazeera America. The channel is slated to be carried by Comcast, Dish Network, Verizon and AT&T.
Al Jazeera English, launched in 2006, reaches about 4.7 million homes.
The Al Jazeera network of channels has 70 bureaus worldwide and are part of Al Jazeera Media Network, which since 2011 in that country is officially a “private institution of public utility,” or roughly equivalent status as a U.S. public television network.
Al Jazeera, which translates to “The Island” as a reference to the Arabian Peninsula, receives an annual financial stipend from the Qatar government, Al Shihabi said, but the network stresses what it says is total editorial independence.
Al Jazeera Media Network is headed by Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani, a cousin of the Qatar’s ruling emir and a former government information minister.
Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the emir since 1995, provided the equivalent of $137 million in seed money to launch Al Jazeera in November 1996.
Bill Shea
Crain’s Detroit Business