Aljazeer America 3PM Eastern August 20?

[chime]

Well, for many weeks I have been wondering what time on
the 20th was launch? Well, I looked in an LAtimes TV
section which goes to Zap2it. Looks like 3PM Eastern,
there is an hour preview "This is Aljazeera" Earlier
all of Current TV items are pre-recorded packaged
shows. Surprisingly while weekends have some other
items, there are no Sunday type discussion shows.
Here, I am fortunate keeping it on Dish 215 and
Uverse 189, but surprised Uverse didn't move
to their news section in the 200s

 

[ajc_trw]

We will get AlJazeer America on channel 114 on Verizon FiOS right between C-Span 3 and Fox Business Channel. I will reserve my opinion until I've tasted that pudding.

 

[Mario500]

According to Zap2it, this Thursday, August 15th, is the last day for Current TV to broadcast "The Bill Press Show", "The Stephanie Miller Show", "The War Room", "The Young Turks with Cenk Uygur", "Viewpoint", and "Joy Behar: Say Anything!" before Al Jazeera America takes their place.

Personally I would have named Al Jazeera America "Al Jazeera USA" since its targeted audience would be folks in the United States (I also find Al Jazeera USA catchier than Al Jazeera America).

 

[sandiegoinexile]

Joy's last original show was a couple weeks ago. She's had three weeks of reruns/encores. A little while ago I noticed that Current has stopped their promotional spots for their existing lineup. Now each commercial break gets an AJAM ad.

Seems odd to start on a Tuesday. IMHO, they won't get much traction until they begin referring to themselves as AJAM, or even just AJ. They also are going to be hurt by broadcasting only in SD.

 

[umfan]

All 30 people who might tune in can tell us how it goes.

 

[JayR]

From the Los Angeles Times:

Al Jazeera America faces more than the usual new-kid challenges

On Tuesday (August 20, 2013), Al Jazeera launches Al Jazeera America, an ambitious news network that hopes to challenge CNN, Fox News and MSNBC on their own turf. It has opened 12 bureaus around the country and is hiring almost 1,000 people, including several big-name journalists, with promises of covering serious national news here and a goal of becoming part of the American landscape.

Wooing prominent American journalists to work for Al Jazeera has not been a problem. Familiar faces that have signed up for duty include former CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien, ex-CBS News reporters Sheila MacVicar and Joie Chen and former NBC News anchor John Seigenthaler.

I wish the network the best.

 

[dtuba]

Does anyone know if they are going to broadcast in HD?

 

[PhillyWatch]

It's a bummer to lose Current but AJAM will be an incredible breath of fresh air for American cable news consumers. I've pretty regularly tuned into Al Jazeera's English channel based in Doha and their global reporting is hard to beat. With all they've invested in this new U.S. venture (opening 12 American bureaus, big name hires from ABC News, CNN etc.), this new channel will hopefully show the American public what a true cable NEWS channel should look like; not the democratic/republican mouthpieces that FOX is and MSNBC has become and not the pop-news celebrity gossip/trial of the moment showcase CNN/HLN has become. The Bush administration did a good job of painting Al Jazeera as an evil terrorist mouthpiece, and that was easy as most Americans had no way to "sample the pudding" as someone earlier put it. Now we will get a dedicated American version. Sample the pudding! You may still tune back into your propaganda machine of choice, but for actual relevant current events in America and abroad, I think (and hope) Al Jazeera America will be the news network to turn to.

 

[blizzard59]

You may still tune back into your propaganda machine of choice, but for actual relevant current events in America and abroad, I think (and hope) Al Jazeera America will be the news network to turn to.

I hope you're right too, but I must say I was a bit disheartened to hear that the focus of Al Jazeera America will be mostly on domestic news. In the past when I've tuned into Al Jazeera English, I've done so mainly to get coverage of international stories that just wouldn't be likely to get covered by any of the American networks. That, I feel is what Al Jazeera America should try to focus on the most.

This is another topic, but also disheartening to hear is that, upon the launch of Al Jazeera America, the live stream of of Al Jazeera English will no longer be available in the United States (although getting around geoblocking typically isn't too hard) nor will the freely available satellite broadcast on Galaxy 19.

 

[AKA]

All 30 people who might tune in can tell us how it goes.

I guess in one of 30. I've been looking forward to the channel since it was announced.

Does anyone know if they are going to broadcast in HD?

I'm sure they will down the road, but right now all they have is the SD space currently occupied by Current.

 

[Morgan Wick]

And naturally, about as many people will watch as watch BBC World News or MHz Worldview where it's offered, which is about nil.

Americans say they want actual news, but when they actually see it they find it either boring or biased. (Though now that Comcast carries BBC World News 24/7 I actually find their 15-minute shows easier to sit through than I did World News America when it was an hour show on BBC America, so maybe they just severely misunderstood American tastes.) A lot of people just associate Al Jazeera with "that network that ran the bin Laden tapes", and if, as Stephen Colbert says, "reality has a known liberal bias", AJA will be a bigger conservative lightning rod than MSNBC or the New York Times.

 

[FRR]

It's a bummer to lose Current but AJAM will be an incredible breath of fresh air for American cable news consumers. I've pretty regularly tuned into Al Jazeera's English channel based in Doha and their global reporting is hard to beat. With all they've invested in this new U.S. venture (opening 12 American bureaus, big name hires from ABC News, CNN etc.), this new channel will hopefully show the American public what a true cable NEWS channel should look like; not the democratic/republican mouthpieces that FOX is and MSNBC has become and not the pop-news celebrity gossip/trial of the moment showcase CNN/HLN has become. The Bush administration did a good job of painting Al Jazeera as an evil terrorist mouthpiece, and that was easy as most Americans had no way to "sample the pudding" as someone earlier put it. Now we will get a dedicated American version. Sample the pudding! You may still tune back into your propaganda machine of choice, but for actual relevant current events in America and abroad, I think (and hope) Al Jazeera America will be the news network to turn to.

You can't mean this....If you really want to watch a good newscast, watch BBC. Don't blame Bush was Al Jazeera's image. They did it to themselves.