Remember that post I wrote a couple of days ago about Paul McCartney not thinking Yoko Ono was responsible for breaking up the Beatles? It was an exclusive interview with David Frost, the famous British Journalist slash TV personality best known for the Nion post-Watergate interviews but also for the Beatles first performance of “Hey Jude”, with a live studio audience, and the band playing that “nananana nanana” all the way past the credits.
I assumed it was for some English talk show but it was, in fact for Al Jazeera network.
Back in 2001, Al Jazeera, after five years of existence, came to worldwide attention when Al Qaeda used it as its network of record for all missives to the Western world. In 2006 they launched an English language offshoot. Essentially, it is news from an Arab perspective. And well hated in the States where both Comcast and DTV and Dish Network pulled out of a deal to air it.
This year, Al Jazeera Sports has been signing up US Pro Sports teams for huge bucks, I’ve been looking around for whom but the other shoe hasn’t dropped yet. It will. And what will happen is the network will lose pro sports as a leverage to lessen hostility in the US to the network.
Frost is part of this lessening of hostility and getting a Beatle to speak to the network is some coup. Unless nobody knows about it, of course.