Al Jazeera America launched Tuesday at 3 p.m. ET, but its expected subscriber base of nearly 50 million may have fallen short of the mark as AT&T U-verse says it dropped Current TV prior to the changeover to the new nationwide news network.
"Due to contract disputes, we dropped the Current TV channel and will not carry Al Jazeera America on U-verse,"
U-verse replied to several queries on Twitter via its AT&T U-verse account. U-verse, with some 5 million customers, is the eighth biggest multichannel provider in the country.
The network also launched without carriage on Time Warner Cable, the second-biggest U.S. cable operator, though TWC had said it was in talks about possibly carrying the channel in the future. TWC dropped Current TV after it was sold to Al Jazeera Media.
An email sent to AJAM representatives wasn't immediately answered.
