Olbermann argues that Current disparaged him to his staff and the press, and revealed confidential contract information. He also claims that his likeness was used in an ad for AT&T without his approval, and that he was not given control of the politics specials. He also blames Current for not letting “Countdown” stream online (though carriage agreements with cable operators prevented it) and for not seeking permission when naming guest-hosts for the program.

Meanwhile, at SXSW, a digital conference in Austin, Texas, Current founder Al Gore was interviewed by AllThingsD’s Walt Mossberg about the Current TV/Al Jazeera deal. Things got testy:
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It was filed by a media consultant who claimed that he came up with the idea for Al Jazeera to acquire Current, but was cut out of the final deal.

The Hollywood Reporter‘s Eriq Gardner has the details:

What happened next likely will generate much conversation given that Gore has made the media rounds defending the sale. According to the lawsuit, “Plaintiffs are informed and believe that Gore was adamant in his rejection of the proposal to sell his liberal, environmentally friendly network to the oil-rich Quataris who owned Al Jazeera. Apparently, Gore had a change of heart.”

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Gore mostly dodged the questions on “Today,” but on “The Daily Show” last night, Jon Stewart kept on him, getting Gore to reveal that the new Al Jazeera network will keep some programming from Current, and will be commercial-free.

Update: Current emails us top let us know that the new channel will not be commercial-free, so Gore was misinformed.

It starts to heat up around six minutes in:

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Gore is currently slated to appear on NBC’s “Today” and CBS’ “Late Show with David Letterman“ on Tuesday, and “The Daily Show” with Jon Stewart Wednesday.

The appearances are particularly interesting, as Gore trashes television news in the book, as noted by New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani.

He also complains that “virtually every news and political commentary program on television is sponsored in part by oil, coal and gas companies — not just during campaign seasons, but all the time, year in and year out — with messages designed to sooth and reassure the audience that everything is fine, the global environment is not threatened, and the carbon companies are working diligently to further develop renewable energy sources.”

Such remarks serve to remind the reader of a business deal Mr. Gore recently made that has ignited charges of hypocrisy and greed: selling Current TV (a channel he helped to found in 2005) for an estimated $500 million to Al Jazeera, the influential Arab news giant, which is financed by the government of oil- and gas-rich Qatar. Mr. Gore, who will reportedly make about $100 million from the deal, describes Al Jazeera in this book as “feisty and relatively independent.”

(h/t Brian Stelter on the Times review)

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Al Jazeera acquired the network earlier this month and plans to launch Al Jazeera America in place of Current TV.

More details after the jump…

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The year was 2006, and Gore and comedian Al Franken (who is new Senator Franken) were in the lobby of the News Corp, building in New York. Rivera knew Gore, and had interviewed him in his prior jobs.

“I run into the vice president with Al Franken by his side, and he looks me up and down and said, ‘look where you ended up.’ As if to say to me, my goodness how could you possibly sell out to go work here for Fox News,” Rivera recalled. “And I said I am still the same guy, and the Vice President says to me in a very tsk tsk condescending way, ‘I guess you will never bite the hands that feeds you.’”

WATCH:

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Brian Stelter in the NY Times has more:

Mr. Spitzer said he had a “wonderful time” at Current, but emphasized that his relationship was with Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, Current’s co-founders, not with Al Jazeera. “Moving forward, their mission will be different,” he said — more international newscasts, less liberal talk about the news…

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So far, only one on-air personality has announced their plans. Jennifer Granholm, who hosts “The War Room.” will continue on for a little while more before leaving the network in the Spring.

“We’ll continue to broadcast The War Room for the next few weeks through the transition, but after that I’ll be going back to teaching, speaking and other things,” Granholm wrote on Facebook.

In a video on The Young Turks YouTube channel, Cenk Uygur says that he hopes to continue hosting the TV program of the same name on the new Al Jazeera network, but that it isn’t clear whether the new owners will want to keep the show.

“It is an interesting question, and one which I do not have the answers to,” Uygur said. Regardless of what happens, he says The Young Turks will always be on their original YouTube channel.

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The Baltimore Sun‘s David Zurawik writes that the addition of Al Jazeera to U.S. cable lineups is “a very good thing.”

In fact, the cable industry’s success in keeping Al Jazeera English off all but a handful of systems in the U.S. was one of the great wrongs of American media. And no one, it seems, wanted to address it. Media critics who looked the other way for whatever reasons should be ashamed.

The New York Times wrote an editorial on the matter saying that it “could bring an important international perspective” to U.S. TV, and gently criticized Time Warner Cable for dropping the channel.

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On “The O’Reilly Factor,” Bill O’Reilly dedicated his “Talking Points” to Gore “The Hypocrite,” for trying to sell the network by December 31 in order to take advantage of tax rates.

“On the Record” with Greta Van Susteren took a similar approach (watch here), as did “Fox & Friends” this morning.

CNN hosted Brian Stelter, who broke the story of the sale, and Howard Kurtz, to analyze the move.

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The New York Times

In a meeting in New York, Mr. Gore leaned on Mr. Murdoch for an extended contract with a lucrative per-subscriber fee.

Mr. Gore asserted that DirecTV should carry a “diverse set of news sources.”

The resulting contract guaranteed Current roughly 10 cents per subscriber per month and helped Mr. Gore secure the financing he needed to acquire Newsworld. It also laid the groundwork for similar extensions with smaller distributors.

That’s why Current, despite having one of the puniest audiences of any widely distributed cable channel, was able to post annual revenue of about $100 million.

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The new channel will not be Al Jazeera English, the company’s English-language news outlet, but rather a new, U.S.-based network. The channel is tentatively being called Al Jazeera America, but a source close to the company says that it isn’t wedded to the name, and may try to create a new brand. One of the options being considered, according to our source, is calling the channel “beIN,” or “beIN News,” to make it mesh with Al Jazeera’s beIN Sport network, which already has some U.S. distribution.

The impetus for the fresh name would stem from Al Jazeera’s brand in the U.S., which, while strong with journalists in New York and DC, is decidedly mixed across the rest of the country.

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Before Al-Jazeera bought Current TV, TheBlaze looked into buying it but we were rejected by progressive owners.glennbeck.com/2013/01/02/did… WG

— Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) January 3, 2013

Apparently Beck’s company wasn’t even able to place a bid, because of its ideology, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Glenn Beck’s The Blaze approached Current about buying the channel last year, but was told that “the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view,” according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

Related: It has been a long road for Beck, from radio to TV to his own company. Watch him talk about his first big break in media here.

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Stelter reports former VP Al Gore, a 20% owner of Current, stands to make $100 million on the deal. He and majority owner Joel Hyatt will sit on an advisory board as Al Jazeera launches a new channel for an American audience which is expected to include about 60% of coverage from Al Jazeera English, which is also in limited distribution in the U.S. Time Warner Cable, which accounted for 14 million Current subscribers, is not planning to carry the new channel.

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The result will be a new channel, not simply a simulcast of Al Jazeera English, the company’s English-language cable news outlet. As for Current TV’s current slate of staffers and shows, the future remains unclear, but likely grim.

Rather than simply use Current to distribute its existing 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. Potentially 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.

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