Remember Current TV? You know, Al Gore? Keith Olbermann? Will anyone notice when it gives way to Al Jazeera America?

If you've been silently concerned about what's been happening lately on (or to) Current TV, you can stop worrying.

by Ken

My goodness, was Current TV really concocted seven years ago? This is from nytimes.com "Media Decoder" Brian Stelter ("Al Jazeera Acquires Current TV"):

Al Jazeera on Wednesday completed a deal to take over Current TV, the low-rated cable channel that was founded by Al Gore and his business partners seven years ago.

Current will provide the pan-Arab news giant with something it has sought for years: a pathway into American living rooms. Current is available in about 60 million of the 100 million homes in the United States with cable or satellite service.

Rather than simply use Current to distribute its English-language channel, called Al Jazeera English and based in Doha, Qatar, Al Jazeera will create a new channel, called Al Jazeera America, based in New York. Roughly 60 percent of the programming will be produced in the United States, while the remaining 40 percent will come from Al Jazeera English.

In the interest of accuracy, it should be recorded that Current came into existence -- um, how to say this? -- well before some of us had any awareness of it. Decoder Brian walks us through the history.

Current was conceived in 2005 after Mr. Gore and another co-founder, Joel Hyatt, bought the small cable news channel Newsworld International. Current’s owners, along with Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt, include several venture capital firms and two major distributors, Comcast and DirecTV.

After several years in obscurity showing viewer-submitted videos and documentaries, Current tacked to the left in 2011 with the hiring of MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. A year later, Mr. Olbermann was fired, but a liberal minded channel made in his image remained. The channel now simulcasts liberal radio shows in the morning and features news-talk shows in the evening by Joy Behar, Eliot Spitzer, Jennifer Granholm and others.

Alas, "none of the shows have drawn significant audiences."

On a typical night in 2012, about 42,000 people were watching the channel, according to Nielsen. Mr. Spitzer quipped to a reporter from Mediabistro last month, “Nobody’s watching, but I’m having a great time.”

At the end of October, Current confirmed that it was considering selling itself. Mr. Hyatt said in a statement at the time, “Current has been approached many times by media companies interested in acquiring our company. This year alone, we have had three inquiries. As a consequence, we thought it might be useful to engage expertise to help us evaluate our strategic options.” . . .

In recent months, uncertainty has plagued the staff of Current, which is based in San Francisco. Mr. Spitzer, the 8 p.m. host, remarked that someone needed to buy the channel. Ms. Granholm, the 9 p.m. host, renewed her contract for just three months. Plans for new programming at other hours have stalled. After the elementary school massacre in Newtown, Conn., the channel replayed the gun documentary “Bowling for Columbine” dozens of times.

Brian reports: "Representatives for Current TV and Al Jazeera did not immediately respond to requests for comment. There was no immediate word about the sale price."

Current’s programming will continue for about three months. Then an international feed of Al Jazeera English will be simulcast on the channel. Sometime later in 2013, the rebranded Al Jazeera news channel, with 60 percent American programming, will start.

Current's slide into obscurity is already well in progress. Indeed, reports Brian, "Current is hard to find on many cable lineups, and some analysts say it’s at risk of being dropped by some companies because of low ratings." However, even its present presence --

would give Al Jazeera a foothold on the country’s cable and satellite service lineups. Then Al Jazeera could revamp the channel and promote it as a new American-based news source.

The source of all this information, by the way, is "people with knowledge of the deal who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly." Whether the "people with knowledge of the deal" were authorized to speak anonymously to the NYT Media Decoder is unclear.

“Al Jazeera is planning to invest significantly in building ‘Al Jazeera America,’ a network focused on international news for the American audience,” the Current chief executive Joel Hyatt said in an e-mail to staffers on Wednesday evening. Referring to Mr. Gore, he said, “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.”

The plan will bring Al Jazeera, which is financed by the government of Qatar, into closer competition with CNN and other news channels in the United States.

For Al Jazeera, the acquisition is a coming-of-age moment. A decade ago, the Arabic-language channel was reviled by American politicians for showing video tapes and messages from al Qaeda members and sympathizers. Now it is acquiring an American channel.

“They really want to be able to compete for American viewers, and they have to find some way to get on,” said Philip Seib, the director of the center on public diplomacy at the University of Southern California and the author of “The Al Jazeera Effect.”

Mr. Seib said access to Americans is important both for economic reasons, for the channel’s advertisers, and for “the journalistic legitimacy of their venture.”

To date, the country’s cable and satellite distributors have been reluctant to carry Al Jazeera English. It is available in just a handful of cities, including New York and Washington. To change that, Al Jazeera has lobbied distributors, called for a letter-writing campaign by supporters and promoted its widely praised coverage of the Arab Spring.

Acquiring Current TV, and thus its distribution deals across the country, solves this dilemma for Al Jazeera, at least partially. . . .

Al Jazeera intends to open new bureaus across the United States to support the American programming. The news operation currently has bureaus in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Miami, and Chicago.

It seems safe to assume that involvement by Keith Olbermann is not anticipated -- by anybody anywhere. Say, has anybody heard from Keith lately?

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