Al-Jazeera: Web-inspired business strategy?
The Economist is knocking Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based television news network, and other upstart 24-hour news services, saying they seem to want influence more than profits. Fox News and before it CNN have followed the same path, growing audiences and influence prior to turning up the revenue. Come to think of it, that's the path to profit for any social network, from MySpace to YouTubeIf the Web can bring teens together on MySpace, perhaps it can help inoculate the world against intolerance, too. and every community on the Web before them.
If you build a critical mass of eyeballs the revenue will come. Any Web company recognizes the model.
What The Economist really objects to is that Al-Jazeera and other new channels are government funded, griping at the end of the article about the Emir of Qatar "digging into his pocket" to grow Al-Jazeera:
Yet profit seems not to be the main motive for global broadcasters. Wounded pride and the desire to promote a particular worldview may be sufficient. France 24, which is expected to debut next month, is the result of another long-mooted scheme, reawakened by Jacques Chirac. The country's amour propre apparently took a bashing after CNN, covering events at the UN, cut off a broadcast of wild cheering of France’s opposition to the Iraq war. Mr Chirac wants a Gallic counterweight to the American behemoth. But to reach an audience of reasonable size, much of its output will be in English. The price is said to be €80m ($102m) a year, shared between the French government, state television and TF1, a private broadcaster. That may be seen domestically as little to pay to promote French cultural values. There is also talk of France 24 launching an Arab channel next year.
The free market is a fine thing, but it's not the only thing when we talk about the evolution of culture. Moreover, one rich founder's money is the same as another's in terms of their power to shape the media. Ted Turner and Rupert Murdoch poured vast sums into their news networks to win market share, then worried about the profits. Not that the profits were something they needed to worry about when the only thing on was TV.
Regardless of its alleged anti-Americanism (with which The Economist has no problem, mind you, nor should anyone who recognizes there is more than one version of the stories being told on any television network) Al-Jazeera is a very important bulwark against Islamist extremism, which is seeking to blot out all secular and non-conforming views. As Nature reports today in its online version, Muhammad's counsel to Muslims, "Seek knowledge, even as far as China," a call for wider learning and thinking, is under attack by so-called "Islamists."
If some government money keeps different views alive, more power to it. Here's hoping there are always many versions of the news. If the Web strategy can bring teens together on MySpace or make videos produced by real people available globally, perhaps it can help inoculate the world against intolerance, too.