NEW YORK -- Al-Jazeera on Thursday started slowly taking the wraps off plans to enter the U.S. market with a round-the-clock English-language version of the Middle East newsie, (subscription-restricted) Variety reports Friday. Excerpts follow.
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Execs at the Qatar-based cablercabler say they are starting talks with cable and satellite operators in hopes of launching in the U.S. in early 2006.
Cable operators told Daily Variety on Thursday that talks with Al-Jazeera are in the very early stages. Time Warner Cable said it hadn't yet received a formal carriage proposal from the net; Cox Cable reps said they had not yet been approached either. Al-Jazeera founder Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, who is also the ruler of oil-rich Qatar, is bankrolling the network.
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The as-yet-unspecified budget for the English-language offshoot will apparently allow the news channel to hire hundreds of journalists and producers over the next few months; HQHQ for the new network is under construction in Doha, capital of Qatar, as are branch broadcast centers in Washington, D.C.; London; and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The international feed will be broadcast from different time zones throughout the day from those centers.
New channel will offer coverage of world events, but with a special accent on the Mideast, Al-Jazeera Intl. commercial director Lindsey Oliver told Daily Variety.
NEW YORK -- Al-Jazeera on Thursday started slowly taking the wraps off plans to enter the U.S. market with a round-the-clock English-language version of the Middle East newsie, (subscription-restricted) Variety reports Friday. Excerpts follow.