Al Jazeera English plans to close its live broadcast centre that operates from London’s Shard skyscraper and move programming to Qatar, with the possible loss of dozens of UK-based jobs.
In an email to staff, the network’s managing director, Giles Trendle, said Al Jazeera was “looking to undertake a restructure involving the move of AJE live programming to Doha. The move would include the news bulletins between 1900GMT and 2300GMT produced from London, and The Stream programme produced from Washington DC.”
Staff producing this live output would be offered “the opportunity to relocate to Doha”, Trendle said.
Staff in the London office had won a 9% pay rise at the end of 2022, after threatening to go on strike just before Qatar hosted the World Cup. The National Union of Journalists balloted 40 Al Jazeera English journalists over strike action in September, and around 30 technical staff working for the channel are represented by the Bectu trade union.
Nearly 40 jobs are thought to be at risk. Production of talkshows and documentaries is expected to continue in London after the live news broadcasts move.
A Bectu spokesperson said the union had been told about the “extremely disappointing” plan, but did not have any further information.
“The union is seeking more detail on the proposals, including which positions have been earmarked for redundancy and how that figure was reached, and will be meeting with the company this coming Monday,” they added.
The original vision for Al Jazeera English, founded 17 years ago, was to have a global network producing live news from broadcast bases in Kuala Lumpur, Washington DC, London and Doha. The Malaysian and US centres had already closed, and the latest move will centralise the network’s operations in Qatar.
The closure of the live broadcast centre is not expected to affect the UK correspondents and camera crew, who report on British news, and the Shard newsroom will remain open. Al Jazeera and Trendle did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The job losses would add to the hundreds of media positions that have been cut or put at risk in the UK in the last year. Hundreds of jobs were lost when the BBC announced deep cuts to its World Service output, stopping producing radio programmes in 10 languages including Chinese, Arabic and Hindi.
In November, more than 50 staff roles at the Independent were put at risk of redundancy, with the newspaper citing a decline in the digital ad market and worsening economic conditions.
In February DC Thomas, the publisher of the Beano and Scottish newspapers including the Press and Journal and the Courier, announced plans to cut almost a fifth of its workforce and shut almost 40 magazines as part of a “digital reset”.
