Ok, quick: What channel is Current TV on?

Some of you might be able to answer that, but most of you won't. Though the cable channel is on both Brighthouse and Verizon in the Tampa Bay area, its ratings here and throughout the country have been relatively anemic, even after all the buzz when Al Gore hired Keith Olbermann to be Current's signature anchor in early 2011.

Olbermann was sacked by Gore last March, and with it went any viable chance that the network could make a go of it as an even more liberal alternative to MSNBC.

Now comes word that Current has been sold to Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite news service that was created in 1996, but became familiar to Americans after the 9/11 attacks, especially after then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called their reporting "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable."

But as the most-widely watched network in the Middle East, even Rummy couldn't avoid its power when he published his memoir in 2011, going on Al Jazeera in what turned into a highly contentious interview.