Nearly 100 million households worldwide receive Al-Jazeera’s English service, almost half as many as CNN, station executives say. Since January, it has been broadcasting news to 550,000 Israeli homes on Yes TV, the country’s largest cable provider.

"It’s extraordinary that while the rest of the world is happy to watch us ... the U.S. stands in splendid isolation," said Al-Jazeera English managing director Nigel Parsons at the station’s headquarters in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar.

Station executives said they expected a dogged battle for American airwaves because Al-Jazeera’s Arabic channel has been excoriated by the Bush administration as a mouthpiece for terrorists, including Al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden.

Still, No. 1 U.S. cable provider Comcast Corp., was ready to carry Al-Jazeera English’s November debut in the Detroit area, Al-Jazeera executives said.

But Comcast suddenly pulled out just before launch, Parsons said. He and Wadah Khanfar, managing director of Al-Jazeera Arabic, believed the decision was spurred by U.S. political opposition. But he noted he had no evidence of such pressure, and did not know whether pressure came from the U.S. government, elected officials or lobby groups.

A spokeswoman for Philadelphia-based Comcast, D’Arcy Rudnay, said scarce bandwidth and not political pressure was to blame.

For now, Al-Jazeera’s only U.S. carriers are Fision, a small provider in Houston; Globecast, a French satellite provider; and local providers in Ohio, Vermont and Washington D.C.

The station is currently negotiating with others, Parsons said.

Al-Jazeera faces questions about its marketability in America, however. At one major cable carrier, an executive said Al-Jazeera’s English programming was too similar to BBC World and there weren’t enough likely American viewers to add another foreign-centric news channel.

The executive spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss corporate strategy.

Interestingly, however, Al-Jazeera English has found an audience in Israel for its mix of extensive African, Asian and Middle Eastern coverage. Viewers in Israel also have access to Al-Jazeera’s original Arabic news channel.

"This is thought of as one of the best news channels in the world," said Yes TV spokeswoman Libi Zipser, speaking of Al-Jazeera English. "There are those who think that certain channels are less supportive of Israel, but we just let our customers see what they want to see."

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