Al Jazeera America launches as AT&T drops channel

Al Jazeera America, the latest offshoot of the Middle Eastern media empire, launched Tuesday afternoon with a flurry of live news and pre-taped segments, even as it lost a sizable portion of the viewer reach it had been counting on from AT&T.

The new network, whose launch had been anticipated since Al Jazeera bought an existing channel in January, was turned on at 3 p.m. ET.

The hour-long, taped introduction, anchored by Antonio Mora and Richelle Carey, largely repeated what the company has been saying for months – that it plans to focus on hard news and "real stories about real people."

It flashed video promos of Hillary Clinton and Sen. John McCain lauding Al Jazeera's coverage and mocked Fox News with a clip of talking heads shouting on The O'Reilly Factor.

Al Jazeera also stopped streaming Al Jazeera English, its global news channel that is being replaced in the U.S. by Al Jazeera America (AJAM). Al Jazeera English reached fewer than five million households but streaming of its shows had developed a loyal following from viewers seeking more extensive global news coverage.

AJAM's launch was marred by AT&T's eleventh-hour decision to drop the channel from its U-Verse pay-TV lineup, dropping the network's potential reach – not the number of actual viewers - to about 43 million. 

In January, Al Jazeera paid $500 million to buy Current TV, a struggling cable channel founded by Al Gore, and began winding down the channel to install its own domestic news programming.

In a statement, AT&T confirmed that it dropped Current TV at 11:59 p.m. Monday and said it "will not carry Al Jazeera America on U-verse due to contract disputes."

"We could not reach an agreement with the owner that we believed provided value for our customers and our business," said AT&T, which has about 5 million U-Verse customers but included Current TV only on premier packages.

AT&T said it had notified customers through newspaper ads in July that it may stop carrying the Current TV-AJAM channel.

Time Warner Cable also dropped Current TV at the time of Al Jazeera's acquisition. The two are discussing a new contract.

AJAM was carried Tuesday by four pay-TV providers that continue to carry the channel - Comcast, Verizon FiOS, DirecTV and Dish Network. But the number of viewers who tuned into AJAM's launch is likely to be significantly lower than the companies' combined customer reach.

Alana Johnson, a Nielsen spokeswoman, said the viewer-measurement company didn't have any viewership data available on Tuesday as it needs at least a day to process them.

The lack of advertising on AJAM was conspicuous. Only about six minutes of ads per hour were shown, including in-house promos. Vonage and Procter & Gamble were early sponsors.

"It's not unusual for a newly launched network to carry a lighter ad load as they get off the ground," said David Campanelli, senior vice president and director of National TV at Horizon Media, a media buyer firm. "This one, in particular, comes with additional questions for advertisers regarding the perception of the network by the general public. The challenge they face is to inform viewers as to what this network is about."

AJAM has maintained that its light load of ads is a deliberate strategy to air more news.The channel is owned by the oil-rich government of Qatar, which is believed to be more interested in prestige than profits from its new channel.

The challenges ahead did little to dampen the mood of AJAM's newsroom Tuesday. When Mora and Carey appeared on TV, the employees in its New York headquarters applauded in a standing ovation.