Launched in August 2013, the American television channel of continuous information of Qatari origin definitively ceased broadcasting on April 12, 2016, at the time of the media battle during the election period.
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Installed in the United States for nearly three years (see La rem n°28 p.41), Al-Jazeera America, the channel that wanted to stand out from the competition, lost its daring gamble. Finally, it will not have managed to impose itself in the very closed circle of continuous news channels in the United States. The Qatari channel gathered only a few tens of thousands of viewers – 30,000 on average in prime time and 19,000 during the day –, an insufficient audience to ensure its operation.
Its turnover barely reached 100 million dollars. Announced in January 2016, its closure has been effective since April 12, resulting in the loss of 700 jobs. ” Our business model is simply no longer viable in light of the economic challenges facing the market American medias “, explained Mostefa Souag, managing director of the Al-Jazeera group, owned by the ruling family of Qatar. The channel is not abandoning the American market, however, since it intends to develop its information offer on the web as well as on mobile terminals, thanks to the content provided by the group’s other channels.
At the same time, in March 2016, the management of the Al-Jazeera group announced the elimination of 500 positions out of a workforce of 4,500 people worldwide. Most of these layoffs will concern the group’s headquarters in Doha, but will spare journalists. A decision ” hard to take “, according to Mostefa Souag, who nevertheless constitutes the only option to ensure the competitiveness of the chain in order to ” maintain a leading position “, as well as ” its commitment to quality, independent and impactful journalism around the world “, he added. Faced with the drastic fall in the price of the raw materials – oil and gas – which ensure its wealth, the State of Qatar would record in 2016, for the first time in fifteen years, a budget deficit of more than 12 billion dollars.
Despite major investments, the creation of a dozen offices in the United States (seventy worldwide), the hiring of 800 people including star journalists from CNN in particular, a few scoops and prizes won, Al- Jazeera America’s different tone, less sensationalized long-form reporting than its competitors, and more minority-focused reporting has failed to distract American audiences from traditional networks, Fox News, CNN et MSNBC.
Following an agreement concluded in 2014, the takeover of the Qatari channel by the cable operators Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks, thus opening up a potential audience of 55 million households, did not produce the effect expected. Apart from strong competition, the channel has also suffered from internal conflicts leading to resignations within the management team, as well as a poor image, following complaints of sexism and anti-Semitism.
In a continuous news sector dominated for fourteen years by the very conservative Fox News, property of group 21st Rupert Murdoch’s Century Fox, Al-Jazeera will remain in the minds of American viewers a channel, not American, but of Arab origin, even if some criticized it for treating the news too “British”.
The closure of Al-Jazeera comes in the middle of the presidential primaries, a crucial period for the news channels. The singular and controversial personality of Donald Trump, Republican candidate, fond of exuberant and provocative speeches, contributes strongly to increasing the audience of these channels. ” I think they can thank Donald Trump. It’s a godsend for these people said Gabriel Kahn, a professor in the School of Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California Annenberg (USC Annenberg).
In the first quarter of 2016, all the major news channels recorded audience records, even for an election period, according to the measurement of the Nielsen firm: Fox News took the lead in the rankings for all channels combined (excluding pay channels such as HBO) , an unprecedented situation; CNN is posting its best results in seven years and MSNBC hasn’t had such success in three years. And, the rates for advertising space are aligned accordingly, CNN would have multiplied its own by forty as soon as the primaries opened.
Competing with new online practices from millenials to access information, particularly social networks (see La rem n°36 p.41), the major news channels suffered a continuous decline in their audience, nearly 20% between 2009 and 2014. A real media boon, « l’effet Trump » temporarily gives them back the place they were in the process of losing at the heart of the information market, at the risk of coverage of political issues that is highly criticized in journalism. The news channels oriented all their programming to make it reality TV around Trump, 24 hours a day “, according to Gabriel Kahn.
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