(Newser)
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What to do if your cable network has all the money in the world, but pretty much no ability to draw American eyeballs? If you're Al Jazeera, apparently you buy Al Gore's crappy cable network. Sure, Current TV hasn't made much of an impression on viewers either, but it does make money, Michael Wolff points out in the Guardian today, proving that "if you have cable distribution, cable success, no matter how lame your content might be (and Current's content was usually very lame), is virtually guaranteed."
But Al Jazeera might be the one buyer that can't capitalize on that. First, because it's so "politically toxic" that some carriers may dump Current TV, and second, because its programming is "dreary as all get-out." And those two problems are related. If Al Jazeera was willing to be bold and really shock Islamophobic America, it would have passionate defenders. "But who is really going over the barricades for some super-rich Qataris and their roster of sanctimonious and boring news shows? Well, I guess Al Gore." Click for Wolff's full column.
