Al Jazeera: Give the People What They Want

In the begining of the Showtime series The Loudest Voice, about Roger Ailes and the rise of Fox News,  Ailes gives Rupert Murdoch some advice about cable news channel: "Cable is about one thing: niche." And for Ailes that niche was Conservatives. As he saw it, the network news programs, CNN and MSNBC were all fighting over the same liberal base. He wanted to capture and keep the big conservative base everyone else was dismissing. "We are just gonna give the people what they want."

And the strategy worked fantastically. Ailes and Fox News reshaped American politics and paved the way for Trump and MAGA nation, all the while making huge sums of money for Murdoch's NewsCorp., including $12B of revenue just in 2020. Fox News became the top rated cable news network in January 2002, less than 5-years after its launch, and had held on to that spot until last month. Losing out to CNN and MSNBC in the coveted primetime slots.

In addition, total day ratings (Mon-Sun, 6a-6a) was just as weak. CNN averaged 1.9M viewers per day in January, MSNBC 1.6M viewers and Fox News 1.3M viewers. And on the day of the U.S. Capitol insurrection, CNN averaged 5.9M viewers, MSNBC 4.5M viewers and Fox News a dissapointing 3.4M viewers.

Well, we know why: Fox News is no longer the only alternative cable news source for the roughly 40% of the electorate that identifies as conservative. After calling Arizona correctly, but early, for Biden on election night (even as uber-liberal MSNBC waited), the channel angered Trump supporters and some of its most fervant viewers have since migrated to even more conservative channels like Newsmax and the OAN Network...Now, add Al Jazeera to the mix? Yes, that's right, that Al Jazeera. The Qatar-based, Arabic, channel is starting a conservative online digital media platform called Rightly. Its purpose is to generate content for "those underrepresented in today's media environment." Okay, if you say so.

Al Jazeera's first foray into America in 2013, via the now-defunct Al Jazeera America through the acquisition of the progressive station Current TV cost the company $2B. So now they are trying their hand at the other end of the political spectrum. Al Jazeera has deep pockets and there are shrewd political reasons for the Qataris to want to more closely align themselves with conservatives. But we'll see if Rightly is seen as credible by disaffected Fox News viewers...perhaps they'll bring on Megyn Kelly, Bill O' Reilly, Lou Dobbs or Glenn Beck.