Some clambor for Al Jazeera on Mediacom in Iowa City

A grassroots movement is brewing in Iowa City to get Mediacom to add Al Jazeera, the Arab-centric satellite news channel, to its lineup.

Letters to the editor urging Mediacom to pick up Al Jazeera have been showing up in the daily Press-Citizen newspaper, and Paul Deaton of the politically-oriented Blog for Iowa wrote a post about their demands over the weekend.

The timing is no accident. United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last week praised the satellite network's coverage of the political upheavals in the Middle East. Clinton suggested that American news outlets need to step up their game to offer the same level of coverage as Al Jazeera.

Bob Libra of Iowa City, state geologist at the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, took some online jabs for writing a letter to the editor urging Mediacom to add Al Jazeera. He acknowledges the campaign may well fan the “Peoples Republic of Iowa City” stereotype about his community.

Even some Al Jazeera enthusiasts are ambivalent about the campaign, Libra said, believing people who want to view it can already do so on the Internet.

But Libra believes that having Al Jazeera on cable would serve an improved understanding of the Middle East better by providing access to new information and perspectives to those who wouldn't ordinarily seek them out on the Internet.

“The bottom line is, Al Jazeera does good news,” Libra said.

Mediacom has no immediate plans to add Al Jazeera, company spokeswoman Phyllis Peters said, although it is interested in hearing from customers about their programming preferences.

The decision whether to offer Al Jazeera would depend on a number of factors, Peters said, including the amount of demand for the channel, the availability of channel capacity, and the terms and expense of rights to carry the programming.

Iowa City's cable TV administrator, Bob Hardy, said the city's franchise agreement with Mediacom requires the cable TV company to offer “channel diversity,” but a recent survey found Mediacom already meets the requirement. He said the primary interest in more diversity on Mediacom appears to be a wish for more Spanish-language content.

In short, Hardy said, the city doesn't have any leverage to require Mediacom to add Al Jazeera, and customers who want Al Jazeera should ask Mediacom directly. He said the decision would likely not be made at the local level, but would likely have to involve Mediacom officials at the corporate level.

Al-Jazeera is doing everything it can to make that easier. The company has a  web link,  Demand Al Jazeera , on its web site that can be used to fill out a request form to its local cable providers.

Mediacom also has a customer comment link that can be used to request programming.. Fewer than a half-dozen cable networks presently carry Al Jazeera, including cable providers in Burlington, Vt. and Toledo, Ohio.