Al Jazeera America’s debut on US airwaves has garnered only tepid ratings, Variety.com reported Wednesday.
The Qatar-owned news channel attracted only 54,000 viewers to Real Money with Ali Velshi, the most popular show on its debut week, compared to almost 3 million viewers for the top-rated cable news show, Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor.
Al Jazeera America’s launch hour last Monday averaged 22,000, which the report said was well below the minimum threshold used by tracking firm Nielsen to accurately count the viewers.
The station is available in more than 40 million US households over cable networks.