The fact that al-Jazeera International's target audience -- Arab and Asian expatriates, non Arabic-speaking Muslims and news hounds -- is so geographically diffuse only complicates matters. Al-Jazeera also faces the same squeeze in the US as other fledgling cable channels not backed by a media conglomerate: no room at the inn.
Executives do not want the channel relegated to a premium tier, as the Arabic-language channel is in this country, available only to subscribers of the Dish Network willing to pay an extra US$26 to US$40 a month. But mainstream tiers are already crowded, and newer channels devoted to murder mysteries and conspicuous consumption can be much more lucrative. And there's another competitor looming: BBC World has said it plans to bring its 24-hour news channel to the US and is working with Discovery Communications.
So far, al-Jazeera International has not found a cable or satellite provider. The search continues.
The perception that despite the Middle Eastern base, Westerners once again are dictating the news could ultimately pose a much bigger threat to the channel. At the al-Jazeera forum in Doha, some employees of the Arabic-language channel joined the grumbling about the Western tilt in the top ranks.
The English-language channel has been filling out its staff with Arab and Muslim journalists, but even so, the complaints continue. "Does the emir know," asked one post on the Friends of al-Jazeera blog, "his money is being shared around a group of television people who would make Fox News proud? Fellow Arabs in Doha are not amused."
Any eventual success of al-Jazeera International will probably not be measured on the bottom line, but on the international battlefield of ideas. "It has a chance of shifting slightly the agenda-setting decisions made by the media in New York, London and Atlanta," said Daoud Kuttab, the director of the Institute of Modern Media at al-Quds University in Ramallah.
For the emir of a tiny country striving to show the West "the real Arab world, the real Muslim world," in the words of Shammam, that may be victory enough.
RSS