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Al Gore Sues Al Jazeera Over Current TV Deal

Posted by Unknown on Friday, August 15, 2014

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Media |Al Gore Sues Al Jazeera Over Current TV Deal



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Former Vice President Al Gore has filed a lawsuit against the Middle Eastern media group Al Jazeera, accusing it of fraud and breach of contract in its $500 million purchase of Mr. Gore’s Current TV cable channel.


The dispute centers on Al Jazeera’s refusal to turn over “tens of millions of dollars” remaining in an escrow account and still owed to the selling shareholders of Current TV, according to a statement from David Boies, the lawyer representing Mr. Gore and a Current TV co-owner, Joel Hyatt, who are suing on behalf of all the selling shareholders.


“Al Jazeera America wants to give itself a discount on the purchase price that was agreed to nearly two years ago,” Mr. Boies said. “We are asking the court to order Al Jazeera America to stop wrongfully withholding the escrow funds that belong to Current’s former shareholders.”


Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt filed the case in the Delaware Court of Chancery in Wilmington. Few other details are known, as the complaint has been sealed by the court, but Mr. Gore and the other selling shareholders have petitioned to make the case public.


Dawn Bridges, an Al Jazeera America spokeswoman, said that the network’s outside counsel was reviewing the complaint. “We think it relates to a commercial dispute between former shareholders of Current Media and Al Jazeera America,” she said. “We may have further comment once they’ve fully reviewed everything.”


Backed by the government of Qatar, Al Jazeera snapped up Current TV in January 2013 to lay the foundation for its new round-the-clock news network Al Jazeera America. The media group had operated its global English-language channel Al Jazeera English since 2006, and with the new network, was seeking to break into the American market and establish itself as a legitimate news outlet here.


The Current TV deal gave Al Jazeera access to 40 million households for the start of the new network. Mr. Gore reportedly received a $100 million payout as part of the deal.


Al Jazeera America made a big public relations splash when it hit the airwaves in August 2013, hiring nearly 900 journalists across about a dozen cities in the United States. Executives pitched the network as an alternative to the sensationalistic and polarizing coverage of its more established cable news rivals.


The network has steadily gained carriage across cable and satellite companies and now is available in 60 million households.


But Al Jazeera America has been slow to develop an audience. The network averaged about 17,000 viewers during prime time since the beginning of 2014 through the end of May, according to Nielsen. That is a small fraction of the 1.7 million average prime-time viewers for Fox News, the 626,000 viewers for MSNBC and the 488,000 viewers for CNN through the end of June, according to Nielsen.


Ms. Bridges, the Al Jazeera America spokeswoman, said that the network had delivered steady ratings growth over the last year and that its coverage of recent conflict in Gaza and protests in Ferguson, Mo., had lured more viewers. Al Jazeera America reached more than 5.1 million viewers in prime time from July 7 through Aug. 10.


Ehab Al Shihabi, the chief executive of Al Jazeera America, has said that it is still early days for the network and that the group is going to spend its second year expanding its distribution, advertising and journalism.


“Let’s put things in perspective. Other cable news networks have been on television for decades — we’re a year old,” he said in a recent note to staff members to observe the network’s one-year anniversary. “We’re still growing our brand awareness as well as our distribution, which is a little more than half of all U.S. cable homes.”



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