Al Jazeera America launched on Tuesday and just hours before it launched, AT&T decided to suddenly remove it from its UVerse lineup. The network responded with a lawsuit on Tuesday.
According to Reuters, AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel cited a pay dispute as the reason for dropping the network. “We could not reach an agreement with the owner that we believed provided value for our customers and our business,” Siegel explained.
In response, Al Jazeera filed a lawsuit against AT&T, reports Bloomberg. The decision is “wrongful termination of an affiliation agreement,” Al Jazeera said in the filing, which included a sealed complaint. bloomberg notes that Al Jazeera has five days to file a public version or a judge will have to approve an extension to keep the details private.
Even before the AT&T decision, Al Jazeera America has a tough road ahead. Despite drawing high profile journalists like Soledad O’Brien, it still has to fight the perception that Al Jazeera - which is owned by the Qatari royal family - is anti-American. It had trouble securing advertisers, but is trying to spin that into a positive, promoting the fact that it will have just six minutes of commercials per hour.
The network is also still not being carried by Time Warner and would have only launched in 40 million homes on Tuesday if AT&T didn’t drop it. UVerse has five million subscribers.
image: Wikimedia Commons
