According to two people familiar with the negotiations, AT&T Inc has settled a lawsuit over its refusal to carry the US cable-news channel of Al Jazeera Satellite Network on its pay-television service. As part of the accord, Al Jazeera America will now be available on the television distributor's U-verse pay-TV service. The details of the accord were not outlined in court filings made yesterday at the Delaware Chancery Court in Wilmington, Bloomberg observed.
Based on the court filings, both AT&T and Al Jazeera agreed to dismiss all claims and will be paying their own litigation expenses. The representatives of both companies, AT&T spokesman Larry Solomon and Al Jazeera America spokeswoman Dawn Bridges, declined to comment on the settlement. In an earlier court filing dated June 4, both of the companies had told Delaware Chancery Court Judge Sam Glasscock that they have reached a settlement in principle and will be dismissing their claims soon.
There are not many details available about the contract issue that arose between AT&T and Al Jazeera. In August last year, AL Jazeera filed a suit against AT&T, claiming that the phone provider had violated its contracts by refusing the news channel to be broadcasted on its cable-TV network.
Al Jazeera heavily invested in its business, buying former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's money-losing Current TV for half a billion dollars and rebranded it as their own. The purchase reportedly allowed Al Jazeera to have access to around half of the pay-TV households in the US, which is at 43 million homes. Al Jazeera also tapped big-name personalities to help build its US brand, such as former CNN anchors Soledad O'Brien and Ali Velshi. Al Jazeera runs programs which include "Real Money" with Velshi and the current affairs show "Consider This" with former CBS News correspondent Antonio Mora.
AT&T earlier argued that the company decided not to run Al Jazeera due to a failure to settle disputes over terms of their contracts. Al Jazeera claimed that AT&T's contract claims were a pretext and that the latter decided to ban them for fear of getting a backlash from more conservative households in the US. The cable news network has been heavily stigmatized as Americans associate the channel as the favored platform for Osama bin Laden's video messages following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
