[LINK] "Al Jazeera English on the air in Canada"

[rfmcdonald]

At last. The Toronto Star story comes via Bruce DeMara.

As of earlier Tuesday, the network — based in Doha, Qatar and part of the larger Al Jazeera Arabic network — began broadcasting on Rogers Cable, Quebec cable giant Vidéotron and satellite giant Bell Canada Enterprises after signing distribution deals recently with three of the country’s largest media companies.

“We’re absolutely excited by it. It’s taken a long time but that’s outside of our control. Our goal is as quickly as possible to get it available in every corner of this country and that’s not the case yet. We’ve got other companies that we’ve got to conclude deals with,” said Al Jazeera English managing director Tony Burman, a former senior executive at CBC News.

Vidéotron, Quebec’s dominant cable provider, is offering the service free for three months as part of its news package, Burman noted, adding he hopes other players in the market will follow suit or offer similar incentives.

Al Jazeera English received regulatory approval from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in November. The network, which is almost four years old, initially met opposition from Canadian Jewish organizations because of concerns it would broadcast anti-Semitic content, claims that continue to dog the Arabic-language network.

But groups like the Canadian Jewish Congress gave their support for the English-language version to be broadcast in Canada after Al Jazeera executives agreed to set up a consultation process that would allow them to air concerns.

“All of the negative stereotypes that have been attached to Al Jazeera (English), they fade away when people look at the channel and realize it’s a channel that’s been on the air for almost four years and it’s award-winning,” Burman said.

[. . .]

The window Al Jazeera’s 4 p.m. news report opened was unlike anything North American viewers have seen before. The first impression was of immediacy and global inclusiveness, with headlines encompassing the arrest of the Times Square bombing suspect, the spread of the oil spill off the Gulf of Mexico coastline, a teaser for an upcoming one-one-one interview with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and renewed concerns over airport closures in Ireland and Scotland caused by the erupting volcano in Iceland.

In the next 20 minutes, reports on these topics were filed to Al Jazeera’s English-language studios in London from its own correspondents in New York, Louisiana, Pakistan and Ireland. They were accompanied by graphic, up-to-the-minute news footage and sidebars, including interviews with shrimpers in Louisiana suddenly prevented by government edict from pursuing their livelihood.