Ten years after its broadcasts first jolted Arab and American leaders, Al-Jazeera’s long-awaited English channel lit up the airwaves Wednesday, and quickly showed it was different to Western rivals such as CNN.</p>
<p>The new channel’s programs focused on the Third World, screening grim images of Palestinian suffering and an upbeat take on an Islamic militia in Somalia — all in high-definition TV.</p>
<p>But some of Al-Jazeera English’s biggest potential audiences — including Arab Americans — were not among the 80 million homes that could receive the 24-hour broadcasts from the channel’s headquarters in Doha, Qatar.</p>
<p>None of the seven major U.S. cable and satellite TV operators carried the slick 3 p.m. (8 a.m. EST) inaugural broadcast.</p>
<p>“It’s November 15th, a new era in television news,” anchor Sami Zeidan said, speaking in front of a flashy newsroom backdrop.</p>
<p>In one of the first reports, the correspondent spoke of “the agony of Gaza” as the pictures showed Palestinians scavenging for food in the rubble of homes destroyed by Israeli bombardment. Malnourished children lay in hospital beds and an Israeli helicopter gunship fired rounds overhead.</p>
<p>The news bulletin gave less time to Wednesday’s report from Israel, where a rocket attack by Palestinian militants had killed an Israeli woman.</p>
<p>Al-Jazeera English appeared eager to show its global reach, shuffling live broadcasts from correspondents in Sudan’s Darfur, Iran, Zimbabwe and Brazil, and breaking in with a report of a tsunami striking Japan.</p>
<p>Many correspondents will look familiar to news junkies. Al-Jazeera’s reporter in Brazil turned out to be former CNN Havana correspondent Lucia Newman. Another CNN notable, former Johannesburg bureau chief Mike Hanna, turned up in the Doha studio.</p>
<p>The network hired more than 500 staffers, poaching journalists from American and British networks, including former CNN anchor Riz Khan, the British Broadcasting Corp.'s David Frost and former ABC correspondent Dave Marash.</p>
<p>Al-Jazeera, which is bankrolled by Qatar’s royal family, hopes to steal viewers from CNN and the BBC by giving the world’s 1 billion English speakers news from a non-Western perspective.</p>
<p>In London, BBC Global News Director Richard Sambrook said Al-Jazeera may take away some of his network’s viewers, but the new channel’s reach stands far below BBC World’s 270 million homes.</p>
<p>“They’ve made a very confident start, which isn’t surprising since they have a large budget and had a long time to prepare,” Sambrook said.</p>
<p>But Al-Jazeera’s Third World focus could backfire, Sambrook said.</p>
<p>“They clearly want to differentiate themselves from the BBC and CNN by representing developing countries,” he said. “It will take some time to see whether they can do that and still keep broad appeal. That may limit their audience.”</p>
<p>In its report from Mogadishu, Somalia — not exactly a regular feature of Western news bulletins — Al-Jazeera English said the notoriously lawless city was now the safest it has been for a decade, thanks to the Islamic Courts militia — a group accused of terrorist ties.</p>
<p>Al-Jazeera’s feisty Arabic news channel has built a reputation for vexing Western leaders, smashing taboos in the Arab world, and broadcasting the views of political opponents who would never be aired by regular Arabic TV channels. At one time or another, no fewer than 18 Arab governments have banned Al-Jazeera journalists from operating in their countries.</p>
<p>U.S. President George W. Bush’s administration has criticized Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the bloodshed in Iraq and said its broadcasting of messages from Osama bin Laden amounts to incitement to terrorism.</p>
<p>Al-Jazeera says the bin Laden messages and Iraqi images are newsworthy. It has urged U.S. officials to regard the channel as the ideal venue for addressing the Muslim world.</p>
<p>Al-Jazeera English has broadcast centers in Doha, London, Washington and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, making it widely available in Europe and the Middle East, including Israel.</p>
<p>U.S. carriers have adopted a “show-me” policy, waiting to see what sort of reaction the station generates before carrying it, said Al-Jazeera spokesman Michael Holtzman.</p>
<p>Al-Jazeera English will be available to American customers of GlobeCast, the subsidiary of a French company that offers satellite TV service and three smaller providers.