Al Jazeera America, the TV news station controlled by Qatar's royal family, launched almost two years ago with great fanfare but isn’t living up to the hype.
The network was supposed to provide a thoughtful alternative to U.S. news outlets. But it attracts just 30,000 viewers a night to its newscasts and is struggling financially,
The New York Times reports.
The station's newsroom also is in disarray. Marcy McGinnis, former senior vice president for news gathering at Al Jazeera America, quit Monday, and two other top executives have left in the last week, according to the Times.
"I didn’t want to be there anymore because I didn’t like the culture of fear," McGinnis told the paper. "People are afraid to lose their jobs if they cross Ehab." She was referring to Al Jazeera America CEO Ehab Al Shihabi.
As for American media companies, the focus is on mergers. Comcast abandoned its pursuit of Time Warner Cable last month amid opposition from the government, and now investors wonder whether the government will permit AT&T and DirecTV to combine.
Netflix and Cogent Communications Holdings have urged regulators to quash AT&T's proposed acquisition unless limits are placed on the combined company's fees for transmitting Internet traffic.
Surprisingly enough, the fact that Netflix and Cogent have requested conditions may be "good news" for the deal, Craig Moffett, an analyst at MoffettNathanson, told Bloomberg. He expects the merger to be approved.
"The broad consensus is that Netflix played a central role in scuttling the Comcast deal,"
Moffett said. Now, "two of the most ardent opponents are tacitly blessing the idea of the merger as long as there are appropriate conditions."
Morningstar analyst Michael Hodel offers a mixed assessment of AT&T.
"We aren't fond of several capital-allocation decisions AT&T has made recently, including the acquisition of DirecTV, the foray into Mexico, and the substantial sum spent at the AWS-3 spectrum auction,"
he writes on Morningstar.com.
But, "AT&T's wireless unit, its largest segment at about half of sales, is its most attractive business. AT&T and Verizon Wireless have unmatched scale and resources to make the investments needed to continue meeting customer needs while generating strong margins and cash flow."
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