delivering accurate
In response to your article “Qatar — Will Aljazeera America save us?”(http://www.menafn.com/1093883851/Qatar — Will-Aljazeera-America-save-us), we wanted to make some important points about Aljazeera America — why we launched, what we’re doing, and what it means for the future of the media.
Aljazeera America launched in August 2013, to bring the uncompromising ideals of the award-winning Aljazeera Media Network to the US market and provide American viewers with unbiased, fact-based, indepth coverage of US and international news — or as USA Today wrote about Aljazeera America: “A place in the world of cable where people who want actual news can find it.” (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/rieder/2014/01/27/can-al-jazeera-america-flourish/4938253/)
We designed Aljazeera America to be cost-efficient and synergistic with Aljazeera English (AJE). We share our US regional bureaus with AJE and air 6 hours of news from Doha every day. Our local bureaus did not cost millions to open; they are staffed efficiently and located in important (and low-cost) areas around the US. Our business model is built around efficiency, synergy and growing the Aljazeera Media Network.
Your article mentions Aljazeera America’s viewership. We are proud of the gains that Aljazeera America has made: in less than one year, we gained distribution on most of the major cable operators in the US including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Dish, DirecTV and most recently AT&T U-Verse.
Aljazeera America is currently available in over 53 million homes, or approximately half of all available cable homes in the US. This will continue to grow in the next few months as Nielsen captures new, recently-added carriage, expecting to put us in over 55pc of US cable homes. But being distributed in half of US cable TV homes does not give every Aljazeera America fan the opportunity to view the channel. Unlike our cable news competitors, and PBS, we do not reach the full universe of approximately 100 million cable homes in the US.
It’s important to remember some other differences between Aljazeera America and our cable news competitors. The competition have been on TV for over 20 years. We’ve been in business less than one year. Other cable news channels were not rated at launch as Aljazeera has been. Additionally, Aljazeera America offers a different type of news product than our competitors: less focused on “infotainment” and celebrity news, we offer more reporters on the ground in more places and a focus on world-class journalism.
So we ask: is it a bit early, and a bit misleading, to compare Aljazeera’s viewership to others at this time? Since launch, we’ve seen three straight quarters of household and audience growth; total viewers have increased and the number of households watching have grown over 30pc. During the first two weeks of the Gaza/Israel war, more than three million unique viewers tuned in to our coverage, and the month of July was officially our strongest month for total digital traffic to date.
And lastly, according to Nielsen audience research, Aljazeera America has a very high composition of affluent, educated and professional or managerial viewers. The number of people watching Aljazeera is growing every day, and they are advertiser-friendly in every way.
To clarify, the viewership number you have cited (15,000 viewers) represented average viewers per minute in June 2014 Primetime (Monday-Sunday, 8-11pm). The average number of unique viewers watching Aljazeera America on a daily basis is more than 500,000 — with the current distribution we have.
But ratings only tell part of the story about Aljazeera America.
We believe our most important measure of success is how our work adheres to the overall mission of Aljazeera Media Network. We are helping re-balance the global media by delivering accurate, in-depth, unbiased news stories that aren’t covered elsewhere and that respect the diversity of today’s world.
Yes, we are challengers.
Just as in 1996 Aljazeera Arabic changed the face of media in the Middle East, and in 2006 Aljazeera English introduced a fresh voice in international news, we at Aljazeera America are introducing a new breed of cable news to US audiences.
Our work is ongoing. Less than one year in, we’re just getting started. Some have criticised our work, some question whether we will continue, and misinformed prejudice against Aljazeera is still rampant.
But as the Baltimore Sun reported about our coverage of Gaza, “If anyone with an open mind was looking for evidence as to how the presence of Aljazeera America enriches the landscape of broadcast news and offers viewers the chance to be better informed about the Middle East, it was on display last week.” (http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-07-03/entertainment/bal-al-jazeera-america-excels-in-covering-killings-of-middle-east-teens-20140703_1_al-jazeera-america-israeli-air-force-hamas).
The industry sees the value of our work. In less than one year, Aljazeera America has already won several major industry awards, including two 2013 Peabody Awards, seven National Headliner Awards (including several first place awards), the Robert F Kennedy Journalism Award, a Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, a NAMIC Vision award from the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications and have recently been nominated for two News and Documentary Emmy awards.
Trendsetters and trailblazers in the market always experience a challenge as they introduce a new product, particularly a product that looks beyond parochial borders, impacts an ethnically diverse population, and shakes up people’s perceptions of what to expect from news.
We’re proud to be a trendsetter and a trailblazer, and we believe that for Aljazeera America, the best is yet to come. We hope you’ll come to see our work.
Jocelyn Austin, Director, Publicity, Al Jazeera America.
In response to your article “Qatar — Will Aljazeera America save us?”(http://www.menafn.com/1093883851/Qatar — Will-Aljazeera-America-save-us), we wanted to make some important points about Aljazeera America — why we launched, what we’re doing, and what it means for the future of the media.
Aljazeera America launched in August 2013, to bring the uncompromising ideals of the award-winning Aljazeera Media Network to the US market and provide American viewers with unbiased, fact-based, indepth coverage of US and international news — or as USA Today wrote about Aljazeera America: “A place in the world of cable where people who want actual news can find it.” (http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/columnist/rieder/2014/01/27/can-al-jazeera-america-flourish/4938253/)
We designed Aljazeera America to be cost-efficient and synergistic with Aljazeera English (AJE). We share our US regional bureaus with AJE and air 6 hours of news from Doha every day. Our local bureaus did not cost millions to open; they are staffed efficiently and located in important (and low-cost) areas around the US. Our business model is built around efficiency, synergy and growing the Aljazeera Media Network.
Your article mentions Aljazeera America’s viewership. We are proud of the gains that Aljazeera America has made: in less than one year, we gained distribution on most of the major cable operators in the US including Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon, Dish, DirecTV and most recently AT&T U-Verse.
Aljazeera America is currently available in over 53 million homes, or approximately half of all available cable homes in the US. This will continue to grow in the next few months as Nielsen captures new, recently-added carriage, expecting to put us in over 55pc of US cable homes. But being distributed in half of US cable TV homes does not give every Aljazeera America fan the opportunity to view the channel. Unlike our cable news competitors, and PBS, we do not reach the full universe of approximately 100 million cable homes in the US.
It’s important to remember some other differences between Aljazeera America and our cable news competitors. The competition have been on TV for over 20 years. We’ve been in business less than one year. Other cable news channels were not rated at launch as Aljazeera has been. Additionally, Aljazeera America offers a different type of news product than our competitors: less focused on “infotainment” and celebrity news, we offer more reporters on the ground in more places and a focus on world-class journalism.
So we ask: is it a bit early, and a bit misleading, to compare Aljazeera’s viewership to others at this time? Since launch, we’ve seen three straight quarters of household and audience growth; total viewers have increased and the number of households watching have grown over 30pc. During the first two weeks of the Gaza/Israel war, more than three million unique viewers tuned in to our coverage, and the month of July was officially our strongest month for total digital traffic to date.
And lastly, according to Nielsen audience research, Aljazeera America has a very high composition of affluent, educated and professional or managerial viewers. The number of people watching Aljazeera is growing every day, and they are advertiser-friendly in every way.
To clarify, the viewership number you have cited (15,000 viewers) represented average viewers per minute in June 2014 Primetime (Monday-Sunday, 8-11pm). The average number of unique viewers watching Aljazeera America on a daily basis is more than 500,000 — with the current distribution we have.
But ratings only tell part of the story about Aljazeera America.
We believe our most important measure of success is how our work adheres to the overall mission of Aljazeera Media Network. We are helping re-balance the global media by delivering accurate, in-depth, unbiased news stories that aren’t covered elsewhere and that respect the diversity of today’s world.
Yes, we are challengers.
Just as in 1996 Aljazeera Arabic changed the face of media in the Middle East, and in 2006 Aljazeera English introduced a fresh voice in international news, we at Aljazeera America are introducing a new breed of cable news to US audiences.
Our work is ongoing. Less than one year in, we’re just getting started. Some have criticised our work, some question whether we will continue, and misinformed prejudice against Aljazeera is still rampant.
But as the Baltimore Sun reported about our coverage of Gaza, “If anyone with an open mind was looking for evidence as to how the presence of Aljazeera America enriches the landscape of broadcast news and offers viewers the chance to be better informed about the Middle East, it was on display last week.” (http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-07-03/entertainment/bal-al-jazeera-america-excels-in-covering-killings-of-middle-east-teens-20140703_1_al-jazeera-america-israeli-air-force-hamas).
The industry sees the value of our work. In less than one year, Aljazeera America has already won several major industry awards, including two 2013 Peabody Awards, seven National Headliner Awards (including several first place awards), the Robert F Kennedy Journalism Award, a Sigma Delta Chi Award from the Society of Professional Journalists, a NAMIC Vision award from the National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications and have recently been nominated for two News and Documentary Emmy awards.
Trendsetters and trailblazers in the market always experience a challenge as they introduce a new product, particularly a product that looks beyond parochial borders, impacts an ethnically diverse population, and shakes up people’s perceptions of what to expect from news.
We’re proud to be a trendsetter and a trailblazer, and we believe that for Aljazeera America, the best is yet to come. We hope you’ll come to see our work.
Jocelyn Austin, Director, Publicity, Al Jazeera America.
