New Leader for Al Jazeera America

Al Jazeera America, the coming international news channel financed by the emir of Qatar, on Monday named an ABC News senior vice president, Kate O’Brian, to be its president.

Ms. O’Brian, a 30-year veteran of ABC, has overseen all news gathering for the network news division since 2007. A spokesman for Al Jazeera said Ms. O’Brian would have full responsibility for the new channel’s strategy and operations.

Ms. O’Brian will report to Ehab Al Shihabi, Al Jazeera’s executive director for international operations, who has been overseeing the creation of the American channel in the absence of a president or senior leadership team. On Monday, he was named the interim chief executive, meaning that he will be responsible for everything but the editorial decisions, including all business functions. A news release said his appointment was effective “till further notice.”

The continued involvement of Mr. Al Shihabi, who is based in Doha, Qatar, was expected, but the appointment of Ms. O'Brian is a surprise; her name was not mentioned in any of the speculation about who Al Jazeera might pick to run the American channel.

“Kate’s arrival speaks volumes about what we intend to do and how we intend to do it,” said Mostefa Souag, the acting director general of Al Jazeera, in a statement. “She is a highly experienced and award-winning journalist who fully understands what Americans want to see and hear when they watch the news.”

The announcement of Ms. O’Brian’s appointment follows a personnel search that began shortly after Al Jazeera acquired Current TV — the low-rated channel co-founded by the former Vice President Al Gore — at an estimated cost of $500 million. That acquisition, announced in January, provided Al Jazeera with something it had been seeking for years: access to tens of millions of American viewers.

Now Al Jazeera has to persuade them to tune in.

Ms. O’Brian, whose start date has not been determined, will inherit a mostly-formed news organization, with hundreds of new employees in New York, Washington and elsewhere. Those employees have been producing practice newscasts and preparing news stories and documentaries that will be shown after the channel has its debut on Aug. 20.

The channel also has a partly-formed programming schedule, centered around “America Tonight,” a nightly broadcast that Al Jazeera says will distinguish it from other news channels.

No “America Tonight” anchors have been named, but the former CNN anchor Soledad O’Brien will be an occasional correspondent. She will also produce documentaries for the channel. Al Jazeera's other on-camera employees include Ali Velshi, formerly of CNN; Richelle Carey, formerly of CNN and HLN; and David Shuster, formerly of MSNBC and Current TV.

The channel also appointed three other television news veterans to top posts on Monday. David Doss, a CNN veteran known for his work on Anderson Cooper's prime-time program, was named senior vice president for news programming; Marcy McGinnis was named senior vice president of news gathering, a role similar to the one she held at CBS News for years; and Shannon High-Bassalik, formerly of CNN and MSNBC, was named senior vice president for documentaries and programs.

The three executives will be based in New York alongside Ms. O’Brian. Mr. Al Shihabi will also spend most of his time in New York, according to a spokesman.

When Al Jazeera acquired Current, it estimated that about 60 percent of its programming would emanate from the United States, with the remainder from Al Jazeera English, the international channel based in Doha. But since then the broadcaster has decided to focus more on the United States, and its promotional material now describes it as “a U.S. news channel that will provide both domestic and international news for American audiences.”

Perhaps foreshadowing what the American channel will look like, anchors and producers at Al Jazeera English repeatedly pointed out on Monday that they were electing to cover royal baby news much less than their competitors.

“As I bring everything I learned to this new role, I’m looking forward to showing the Al Jazeera viewers that there is a strong demand for the type of in-depth reporting for which Al Jazeera is so well known," Ms. O’Brian said in a statement.

Ben Sherwood, the president of ABC News, praised Ms. O’Brian in an internal memorandum on Monday afternoon, calling her both a mentor and a role model for the news division. “While we will miss Kate’s insights, judgment and humor, we know that she is stepping into an important role and we wish her very best with this new challenge,” he wrote.

Media Decoder Blog: Al Jazeera Is Said to Be Acquiring Current TV

5:48 p.m. | Updated Al Jazeera is putting the final touches on 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.

If the deal is completed, 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 based in New York, according to people with knowledge of the deal negotiations. The channel may be called Al Jazeera America. Roughly 60 percent of the programming will be produced in the United States, while the remaining 40 percent will come from Al Jazeera English.

Al Jazeera may absorb some Current TV staff members, according to the people, who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. But Current’s schedule of shows will most likely be dissolved in the spring.

For Al Jazeera, the impending 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.”

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.

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, would solve this dilemma for Al Jazeera, at least partially.

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, but it 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.

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 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.

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.”

The New York Times Company mulled a bid for the channel, but decided not to do so.

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.

If the deal is completed, 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.

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.