Two digits

Staying Stateside, as I believe they used to say, Al Jazeera America is pushing hard to build an audience, and in the key market of New York, is moving to a new, lower number on Time Warner cable in the Big Apple.

Currently, it stands at 181, shouldered by Univision Deportes Network, a Spanish sports channel, majoring on Mexican football, and on the far side by SZEAL2 which broadcasts the religious thinking of various members of the Swaggart family.

AJAM is moving to 57, putting it ahead of BBC America, at 71, CNN at 78, CNN International at 133 and BBC World News at 156. It's the sort of move which could make the BBC Global News target harder to reach...

Long game

It will have been disappointing to the Al Jazeera America team that, despite reasonable publicity - if only from right-wing opponents - its launch show at 3pm on Tuesday last week attracted only 22,000 viewers. More people made it to Goodison Park on Wednesday night to see the Blues eventually despatch Stevenage in the Capital One Cup tie.

Nonetheless, you've got to start somewhere. ALJAM is available in some 40 million US homes. BBC World is in over 25 million - but we still await audience figures.

You can call me Al

Some US reviews of Al Jazeera America's opening day...

.....it seemed to deliver on what it promised — serious, straightforward news. The first hour had a lengthy promotional video that said, among other things, “We will connect the world to America, and Americans to the world.” Then, at 4 p.m., the news began, led by the former CNN anchor Tony Harris, who updated viewers on the unrest in Egypt and a shooting at a school in Georgia.

Brian Stelter in the New York Times

...the opening hours of Al Jazeera America had, for all its high ambitions and expensive expansion, a muted color scheme, unexciting camera work and sophomoric graphics. This may be part and parcel of a more "old-fashioned" approach — let the news be the news — and certainly there can be an over-reliance on bright and shiny graphic elements at the expense of content. But this is television, and even those of us genuinely interested in the topics don't want to spend half an hour staring at three people quoting studies [discussion on climate change in Inside Story]

 Mary McNamara in the Los Angeles Times

Despite its laudable goal of avoiding the polarizing aspects of cable news, AJA might be testing the proposition that the straight-up presentation of the news — sans some of the smoke and sizzle — can succeed in a crowded media landscape. It’s also testing whether Americans will embrace anything called Al Jazeera.

Paul Farhi in the Washington Post

Bandstand

Al Jazeera America is ready to launch, and TV Newser has been on a tour of its temporary HQ - in various bits of the New Yorker Hotel building, not far from Penn Station and Madison Square Garden. It's an art deco monster, built in 1930.

Their main studio is in the basement. In the swing era of the 30s and 40s, this was was The Terrace Room - on May 7, 1937, the cavernous ballroom played host to the first gig by Glenn Miller and His Orchestra.

Here's a brief clip of a 1943 rehearsal in the same room by Benny Goodman and his band.

Watch for toe-tapping presenters...

Try another flavour

Al Jazeera's code of ethics, item 2: Endeavour to get to the truth and declare it in our dispatches, programmes and news bulletins unequivocally in a manner which leaves no doubt about its validity and accuracy.

Old, but...