Shrugging off its initial low viewership, the cable news network Al Jazeera America Tuesday announced an ambitious major expansion.
The network, whose parent is based in Qatar, said it will be opening more U.S. bureaus, hiring more staff and creating more original programming.
The programming will include "a new morning news program, a new weekly sports program, a new weekly culture show and multiple new documentary series," said Al Jazeera America, with "a renewed emphasis on investigative reporting."
The network also said it will move all its operations to a new "state of the art" headquarters in Manhattan within the next 18 months.
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Al Jazeera America launched in August after hiring a number of reporters, hosts and executives from other U.S. media outlets.
One of the channel's major challenges from the beginning has been the fact that many Americans see it as a voice of Middle Eastern interests.
On the air and off, Al Jazeera America officials have repeatedly said they approach stories with no ideological agenda, but rather see the network filling a gap for stories not covered or only superficially covered elsewhere.
When the channel launched, Nielsen reported its audience was so low that the ratings service could not accurately estimate it.
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That would mean that anywhere from 25,000 to 40,000 persons could be watching, nationally, at any given time.
At launch, however, the network was only available in about 44 million of the nation's 100 million television homes.
The deal with Time Warner, concluded last week after extensive negotiations, should increase that to around 54 million. It also gives the network a much greater presence in the key media cities of New York and Los Angeles.
Al Jazeera America officials have also said they have a strong online audience.
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