Eliot Spitzer, the former New York governor turned progressive television host, said Sunday that his show on Current TV is over.
The announcement comes a few days after Al Jazeera said it was acquiring Current TV. Later this year, the Qatar-owned broadcaster plans to turn the channel into an Americanized version of the international news channel Al Jazeera English.
Mr. Spitzer said he had a “wonderful time” at Current, but emphasized that his relationship was with Al Gore and Joel Hyatt, Current’s co-founders, not with Al Jazeera. “Moving forward, their mission will be different,” he said — more international newscasts, less liberal talk about the news.
Mr. Spitzer’s 8 p.m. program on Current, “Viewpoint,” was the centerpiece of the channel’s fledgling prime-time schedule. He said the time slot would have a new host starting on Monday.
A Current spokeswoman said Sunday that Mr. Spitzer “has chosen to step back from hosting ‘Viewpoint.’ Until further notice the show will be hosted by John Fugelsang.”
Mr. Fugelsang, a comedian, has been a frequent commentator and host on Current recently.
For Mr. Spitzer, the amicable separation is unsurprising. Last spring, nine months after his CNN talk show was canceled, Mr. Gore and Mr. Hyatt abruptly asked him to take over the 8 p.m. time slot on Current. The reason: the 8 p.m. host Keith Olbermann was about to be fired.
Mr. Spitzer was, by his own account, “thrilled” to do it, but it was never a full-time job, nor a long-term one. His contract expired after the presidential election in November.
Mr. Spitzer, who resigned the New York governorship in 2008 shortly after his liaisons with prostitutes were made public, is presumed by many people to harbor political ambitions. Asked if they were right to presume that, he said in a telephone interview, “Others presume I have the ambitions.” He laughed and added, “Let me leave it at that for now.”
Along with hosting “Viewpoint,” Mr. Spitzer writes commentaries for Slate and manages real estate investments, among other pursuits.
“I love and always have loved policy issues and trying to have an impact on the issues that are out there,” he said. “I cherish my years in government. I have loved my participation at CNN, at Current; writing; teaching. Where I will go next, I will have to sort out.”
Current TV had been considering a sale for several months. But Mr. Spitzer, like many others, was surprised when Al Jazeera — praised by some in the United States for top-notch news coverage but denounced by others as “anti-American” — became its new owner last week.
Al Jazeera said that the progressive talk shows on Current would continue for about three months before changes are put in place. But two of Current’s hosts, the former governor of Michigan Jennifer Granholm and the sitting lieutenant governor of California Gavin Newsom, said they would leave within weeks.
Mr. Spitzer said his departure was “more of my instigation than theirs, truth be told.” It was not, he said, because of controversy around Al Jazeera.
“I view Al Jazeera as a very serious journalistic outfit,” he said. “They have proven to observers around the world that they are serious and objective. They will have to, at a P.R. level, prove to the American public that that is the case. And I think that over time they will succeed at doing that.”
“For me,” he continued, “journalism has been more a matter of projecting a particular approach to covering policies, to covering issues. It was a continuation of what I tried to do in government. And that doesn’t fit with their vision of what they are going to do.”
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