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Al Jazeera Off to a Slow Start — and That’s Putting It Gently

Aug 29, 2013  •  Post A Comment

Ratings for the new cable news network Al Jazeera America during its first week on television were minuscule, reports TVNewser.

"Not surprisingly given the low-rated channel it replaced (Current TV), and the fact that it lost a few million homes from AT&T before launch (it is currently in just over 40 million homes), AJAM’s launch ratings were pretty low by traditional cable news standards," the story reports.

The top-rated show on the new network was Thursday evening’s "Real Money with Al Velshi," which attracted 54,000 total viewers.

The 2 p.m. Saturday airing of "News Live" drew 48,000 viewers, and "Inside Story," which aired Thursday at 12:30 p.m., averaged 41,000 viewers, the story says. Meanwhile, the debut episode of "The Stream" on Tuesday averaged 38,000 viewers, which the story notes is below Nielsen’s threshold for providing accurate ratings.

4 Comments

  1. I have to admit that I would gladly watch Al Jazeera America to see what it’s like, but the channel/network is not transmitted in HD on DirecTV, and I couldn’t stand looking at the cramped, grainy picture.

  2. I don’t know about other systems, but DirectTV is not carrying it in HD. That makes it hard to watch, when almost every other channel today is HD. That definitely can’t help their situation.

  3. This network is a breath of fresh air to me, not one Kardashian, Miley or royal baby to be seen. Just good reporting on some subjects we would probably never see, such as the misuse of Pakistan’s horrible blasphemy laws and mistreatment of Indian citizens by the government, which wants their land to exploit mineral wealth and maoist insurgents.
    I hope Al Jazeera will be here for the long run.

  4. I have watched AL Jazeara America. They have excellent people and some rally nice documentaries. I think their coverage for news has been better than the other US based cable news channels. They have had a few technical problems but for the most part if people watched I think it is a pretty far product.

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