Politics aside, Al Jazeera America will find American audiences to be tough customers.
That's not to say Al Jazeera America, the working name for the new channel, won't have its own biases.
Current will be replaced by a new Al Jazeera America news channel based in New York, doubling its US-based staff.
This is unfortunate, but I am confident that Al Jazeera America will earn significant additional carriage in the months and years ahead.
FORBES: Current TV Sold To Al Jazeera; $500 Million Deal For Al Gore and Co. [UPDATED]
The Qatar-owned broadcaster plans to replace Current with a new Al Jazeera America news channel based in New York, doubling its US-based staff.
BBC: Al Jazeera targets US expansion after buying Current TV
Al and I will both serve on the Advisory Board of Al Jazeera America, and we look forward to helping build an important news network.
FORBES: Current TV Sold To Al Jazeera; $500 Million Deal For Al Gore and Co. [UPDATED]
But one cable company has balked at carrying Al Jazeera America: Time Warner Cable stopped carrying Current TV upon the announcement of the Al Jazeera deal.
Al Jazeera English also is live-streamed at no cost online and provides insight into what the bigger, new Al Jazeera America will look like, he said.
Analysts agreed, saying the company could be leveraging Al Jazeera America, seeking to get a per-subscriber payment for the cable firm in exchange for carrying the channel.
But another person familiar with the search said the company was concerned that there were "too many columns" for the construction of the kind of studio space that Al Jazeera America will need.
Viewers may be curious just to hear Al Jazeera America, which will have access to millions of U.S. homes now that the traditional Arabic-language network this week acquired Current TV, once owned by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and others.
Bibb wondered why Al Jazeera America would plan to produce 60% of its content in the United States, as it has said, when Al Jazeera has increasingly become renowned for its coverage of the Middle East, especially during the recent Arab Spring revolutions.
If Al Jazeera chose to partner with Discovery (who co-owns BBC America) or another company, they might have a better chance at broader distribution.
Number two, whereas most of our conventional competition focuses on the universe that is North America, Western Europe, Israel and Japan, Al-Jazeera English broadcasts the whole spectrum of the world.
Yet, overall, America's declining image among Arabs has owed less to al-Jazeera than to unpopular American policies, and to Washington's ineptness at selling them.
Dave Marash, the ABC News veteran who once worked for Al Jazeera English, told me the network has a "post-colonial" view of America and its stories can be infused with that attitude.
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