Al Jazeera America May Yet Launch On Time Warner Cable

By Alex Weprin 

When Al Jazeera purchased Current TV, Time Warner Cable removed the channel from its lineup, citing the new ownership and the fact that they would be paying for a different product than the one they originally negotiated.

Now, it seems that Al Jazeera America may get another chance to launch in WTC households. The Huffington Post’s Michael Calderone reports that negotiations between the two companies are negotiating. There is no sure thing, but it certainly sounds as though AJAM may at some point return to the channel space it lost when Current was acquired.

Elsewhere, USA Today looks in-depth at AJAM’s launch, and asks whether American TV news viewers are interested in the product.

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After Mike Viqueira was hired as White House correspondent for Al Jazeera’s new American television venture, the former NBC News veteran braced for a barrage of negative reaction on Twitter.

“I expected some comments from people unfamiliar with Al Jazeera,” Viqueira says. “Out of 300 comments I had on Twitter, there were maybe two that hinted at that.”

“That,” of course, refers to the lingering perception that Middle East-based Al Jazeera is anti-U.S. and a mouthpiece for terrorists, sentiments that took hold when it aired numerous Osama bin Laden videos in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and stories that were critical of the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq War. Indeed, for many Americans, the only encounter with the Al Jazeera brand came during those years.

“The only thing I will say is watch and see,” Viqueira says. “We are going to be about journalism and content.”

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