Al Jazeera to buy Al Gore's Current TV LOS ANGELES / NEW YORK - Al Jazeera is to buy Current TV, the struggling cable channel co-founded by Al Gore, in a move that will boost the Qatar-based broadcaster's footprint in the US. Terms were undisclosed, but analysts estimated the deal could be worth as much as $500m. Al Jazeera said it would start a new US-based news channel with the acquisition, which will make it available in more than 40m US households, up from 4.7m before the deal. The deal brings Al Jazeera, which operates under the patronage of the emir of Qatar and his family, into closer competition with American news channels such as CNN, MSNBC and Fox. But the award-winning channel that is seen in more than 260m homes in 130 countries faces hurdles with US distributors and viewers, television industry analysts said. Current, a liberal channel which has battled low viewership, had been distributed in about 60m of the 100m homes in the US with cable or satellite service. One of its distributors, Time Warner Cable, which accounted for about 12m of those homes, announced late on Wednesday that it was terminating its carriage deal. "We are removing the service as quickly as possible," Time Warner Cable said in a statement. Reuters reported in April that Time Warner Cable was considering dropping Current if it did not reach certain ratings thresholds. Current is also distributed by Comcast Corp and DirecTV, with 22.4m and 19.8m subscribers, respectively. Comcast or DirecTV were either unavailable or declined to comment. Both Comcast and DirecTV also hold equity stakes of more than 5 per cent in Current, according to public filings. Current said Mr Gore, its chairman, and co-founder Joel Hyatt, the chief executive officer, would remain on the advisory board. Analysts said Al Jazeera would have to overcome a significant image problem in the US, where many viewers remember its stridently anti-war reporting of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. "People in America associate Al Jazeera with the Muslim world or the Arab world or the Islam world, and they have problems with that," said Jimmy Schaeffler, pay TV consultant at The Carmel Group. Al Jazeera has only been shown in a handful of cities. It said its new US-based news channel would be separate from Al Jazeera English, and would provide both domestic and international news for American audiences. The new channel would air in 2013 and would have its headquarters in New York. In addition to existing bureaux in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Miami and Chicago, Al Jazeera would open more bureaux and would double its US-based staff to more than 300 employees. Current was founded in 2005 but never caught on. It shifted to a more liberal format from 2011 but ratings continued to disappoint, said Brad Adgate, senior vice-president of research at Horizon Media, which put Current's average daily audience at less than 50,000 viewers and the value of a deal at $400m-$500m. In October Current confirmed it was considering selling itself and had hired JPMorgan and the Raine Group to assess options.