Al Jazeera America had a pretty bumpy launch last week.
The new network pulled in only 22,000 viewers during its inaugural hour last Tuesday afternoon. This was below the Nielsen ratings minimum-accuracy threshold; the number of viewers is essentially Nielsen’s best guess as it cannot measure such a small audience accurately.
The highest ratings the network had last week belonged to Real Money with Ali Velshi, which pulled in 54,000 viewers last Thursday evening.
As Media Bistro notes, the network’s poor showing is unsurprising given that it was dropped by AT&T prior to launching and is replacing the low-rated channel Current TV.