Al Jazeera English announces plans to move from London’s Shard to Qatar
Al Jazeera English plans to close its live broadcast centre in 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,” the email said.
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 journalists over strike action in September. There are also dozens of technical staff working for the channel, who are represented by the Bectu trade union.
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 this 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.
Al Jazeera and Trendle did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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