[Darkman]

By Joyzelle Davis, Rocky Mountain News
November 15, 2006

Al-Jazeera's English-language news service launches worldwide today, but EchoStar's Dish Network won't be carrying the spinoff of the controversial Arab channel.

Neither, for that matter, will any other major U.S. cable or satellite providers. Instead, viewers can watch a streaming version on the Interenet at english.aljazeera.net.

Dish was considered the most likely to carry the fledgling network because the satellite-TV provider offers Al-Jazeera's Arab-language version, as well as the largest number of Arabic channels. But negotiations reportedly fell apart because Dish wanted to carry the English-language version on its Arab-language tier, while Al-Jazeera wanted to reach a larger chunk of Dish's 12.8 million subscribers.

Heather Black, a spokeswoman for Douglas County-based EchoStar, said the company doesn't comment on negotiations....

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( The entire article is at the following source: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/tech/article/0,2777,DRMN_23910_5143886,00.html )

 

[lacruz]

Typical Dish logic, or lack thereof. Why would they try to put an ENGLISH language channel into a programming package where the rest of the channels are in arabic?? Yes, bi-lingual persons would have beneficial access to AJI. But an english speaker isn't going to gain anything from the rest of the channels & presumably AJI was created for english-speakers to reach a broader, worldwide audience, anyway.

Dish should have offered the channel ala carte or put it into the Top 180, not try to put it into an arabic language package...it is NOT an arabic language channel! More rocket scientists in the Dish Programming Dept....

 

[Darkman]

DITTO!

 

[ebaltz]

Thank you Dish. Don't waste our subscription fees to support terrorist propaganda.

 

[billpa]

Thank you Dish. Don't waste our subscription fees to support terrorist propaganda.

That's a very narrow and, I suspect, inaccurate view of the channel taking to the air this month.

 

[James Long]

Or not taking to the air, in this case.


If anyone wants to discuss the fairness of Al Jazeera the OT forum would be more appropriate. Since it is clear that E* is not adding this channel and there really isn't anything more to be said on topic this thread is closed.