At midnight, Al Jazeera English launched in New York City on Time Warner Cable, a major step in the network’s goal of expanding further into the U.S. cable market and a chance to reach two million households in a world capital of culture and commerce. The network will also launch on Verizon FiOS in the coming days.
Al Anstey, managing director of Al Jazeera English, told The Huffington Post that AJE's website receives more online traffic from New York City than from any other city around the globe –- evidence of high demand in the Big Apple. Now that the network will be reaching cable viewers, too, Anstey hopes to make further inroads into the media capital.
“New York is a very important city,” Anstey said. “It’s looking at all directions on the globe and all directions are looking back at New York City. So it’s a truly global city. It’s got a very outward looking, diverse, intelligent audience -- obviously an influential audience in some quarters as well. So it’s a key part of our strategy.”
Since launching in Nov. 2006, AJE has been dogged by lingering fears about its mission, stemming from the Bush administration’s condemnation of its sister network, Al Jazeera Arabic. In addition to verbally criticizing the Arabic network -- which had been airing Osama bin Laden’s video communiqués -- the U.S. military fired missiles at Al Jazeera’s office in Kabul in 2001 and later dropped bombs on its Baghdad newsroom during the Iraq invasion.
