Is Al Hurra gaining popularity in the Middle East?

(from my Arabisto.com blog) Al Hurra, the U.S. government-funded Arabic satellite TV channel that was started explicitly to counter Al Jazeera and act as a public diplomacy tool, is not popular. Since its conception it has born the brunt of criticism. It rated below Al Manar, Hezbollah's channel, in 2005 according to a study by Prof. Telhami and Zogby International. But new data reveals it may have gained a foot up in the most recent Lebanon-Israel war, winning more viewers than CNN. From the Layalina press review about USCs Public Diplomacy blog:

In September, the independent market research service Ipsos-Stat ranked Al-Hurra 56 th out of the 100 most-viewed Arab satellite channels in Saudi Arabia, one of the more competitive TV markets in the Middle East. ... US-based news channel CNN ranked only 83 rd, far behind Al-Hurra... During the war in July and August, Ipsos-Stat ranked Al-Hurra 54 th in the United Arab Emirates, 85 th in Egypt and 32 nd in Kuwait. Doha-based Al-Jazeera, one of the most popular Arabic-language news channels, came in first in most countries surveyed, most often directly followed by its main competitor, the Saudi-backed Al-Arabiya.

Of course what this points out is that communicating to Arabs will go a lot further in, imagine this, Arabic! Most people in the Middle East don't speak English, so of course they are unlikely to watch CNN or BBC. Just like here in the U.S. People are not going to watch Al Jazeera because they don't speak Arabic, and thus the ever-impending launch of Al Jazeera International (English) is potentially momentous. I wish that Americans could watch Al Hurra to see how they do the news, to hear officials explain their policies, and to see what we're promoting abroad. But we can't. It's illegal to disseminate such propaganda to American citizens, which also explains why Americans can't listen to Voice of America etc.