General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWould The Al Jazeera America Cable News Show Have More Viewers With A Name Change?.....
I got to think that a lot of American People avoid watching Al Jazeera America News just because they are uncomfortable with the name. I think a lot of them associate the name with the war in Iraq and perhaps even Middle East terrorists.
I've come to like watching AJA because I believe they are fair and balanced in their reporting and more like news networks of old - there for the news and not entertainment. I think a lot of people don't give themselves a chance to discover this network - just because of perhaps negative connotations that go along with their name.
I'm thinking that they need to change their name to become more successful with greater viewership.
Is this just me or do others have similar thoughts about this?
greymattermom
(5,754 posts)Aja news. Why not?
yeoman6987
(14,449 posts)I believe it would get more viewers with just initials or a whole other name.
el_bryanto
(11,804 posts)When you make a change to pick up new viewers you have to consider how that name change might affect your current viewers; who might be turned off by the name change.
The other issue is that it's not an American network - there are a number of places people might get more unbiased news, but they generally don't choose to. We are an inwardly focused nation in some ways.
Bryant
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
(14,733 posts)What would make it more likely for me to view it would be being located on one of the channels in the range I usually watch, rather than on some presumably obscure high numeric value channel or at some odd time like the the middle of the night.
madfloridian
(88,117 posts)Throd
(7,208 posts)MADem
(135,425 posts)closeupready
(29,503 posts)I don't get my news from cable news programs, however, so that's a big reason I don't watch regularly. I would certainly watch more if they did more documentaries - kind of like the films Vice does.
msongs
(67,496 posts)EX500rider
(10,891 posts)sinkingfeeling
(51,493 posts)Panich52
(5,829 posts)They have, I think, 2 Twitter tags: @ajam & @AJEnglish(?)
Some may not bother to check them out thinking they only cover biased Mid-East stories, but 5 minutes watching would change their minds. Lije another who replied here (sorry, don't remember name), I find their news to be just that. Some of their indepth stories seem a bit slanted -- but only because truth has a liberal bias.
Also, as another pointed out, they're a bit hard to find in some places, and only on higher-cost cable tiers.
I don't think a name change would help much at this point. Besides, they'd gave to change their logo as well.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)by Bush/Cheney in this country, their headquarters were bombed, their reporters either killed or detained and tortured, but their Global Audience only grew as a result.
Their reporters were among the best in the world. They made ours look like clueless, teenage cheerleaders.
Thankfully we had access to them on the Internet so the attempt to censor them failed completely.
Their discussion shows, were unbelievably great, their opinion segments, beyond good.
Despite being owned by the government of Qatar, their reporting was unbiased for the most part and actual reporting of NEWS.
They wanted a US TV audience, but were apparently constantly denied it until Bush/Cheney were gone.
Sadly during the Libya debacle, they lost a lot of their reputation as an unbiased News Source, the reason being Qatar was involved in that conflict, sending in 'proxy boots on the ground' which is something AJ avoided coverage of even as other news agencies caught them red handed.
A top exec at AJ stepped down over the controversy more or less admitting the bias. That probably lost them some of their audience.
However, even with that, their International News programs are exceptional compared to ours, which is a very low standard I admit.
And since the gained access to the US, they are not nearly as good as they were, trying to avoid reporting on topics they normally would have.
But even with that they are far better than the MSM.
American audiences need to expand their horizons and Al Jazeera should not change their name to cater to the dumbing down of America.
They need to learn that people of other nations are not what Fox portrays them to be, and if AJ were to try to hide who they are, it would not help at all and probably would not expand their audience anyhow.
Word of mouth helps and it will probably take time for Americans to get over the fear of the rest of the world.