The Associated Press reported yesterday that a year after its launch, Al Jazeera America still is struggling to acquire viewers and has scaled back its live programming.

After several unsuccessful years trying to get its English-language network carried widely in the United States, the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera bought and closed Al Gore’s Current TV network last year and set up the U.S.-focused AJAM to replace Al-Jazeera English in the U.S. It is now available in nearly 60 million cable and satellite homes, just over half the U.S. market. …

So far this year, Al-Jazeera America has averaged 17,000 viewers in prime time, ticking up to 23,000 during the first week of fighting in Gaza. CNN has averaged 453,000 and Fox News Channel 1.87 million in the same period, the Nielsen company said.

Despite its funding by the deep-pocketed government of Qatar, Al Jazeera America is following up a round of layoffs in April with “a smaller round of layoffs” in the near future.

Late last year, BuzzFeed noted that the station “has already lost more than half the viewers of its notoriously low-rated predecessor,” Current TV, which had 31,000 viewers.

While Al Jazeera often boasts of its editorial independence, last year dozens of staffers resigned from the network in Egypt in protest over Qatari interference . In the past, Al Jazeera was labelled “an informal tool of [Qatar’s] foreign policy.”

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