• December 22, 2011

Five-year-old Al Jazeera English says it reaches 5 million homes as it looks to gain more domestic carriage. Programming is now available to some homes in the country’s top-three markets. In August, the network gained carriage in the New York area on Time Warner Cable and Verizon FiOS. It also has a presence in Los Angeles and Chicago, while it says 40% of its global Web traffic, where it offers a free simulcast, is from the U.S.

Next month, plans call for opening a Chicago bureau to augment four others in the U.S. and 66 others elsewhere. Globally, the network said it now reaches 250 million people in 130 countries and gained carriage in India, Peru, Chile and Mexico in 2011. --David Goetzl