Time Warner Cable Just Helped Al Jazeera America in a Big Way

Time Warner Cable customers in New York will soon be able to find Al Jazeera America much more quickly in their cable lineup, according to Capital New York.

On Tuesday, Al Jazeera America will be moved from channel 181 -- where it was neighbored by Univision Deportes and Shop Zeal -- to channel 57, next to CNN's sister network HLN. The change only affects customers in New York at this time.

Joie Chen, host of the Al Jazeera America nightly news program "America Tonight," sits at the anchor desk in the network's studio space at the Newseum in Washington, D.C., August 16, 2013. (AFP/Getty Images)

The lower channel number makes Al Jazeera America easier to find and much more likely to be found by people just "clicking through." It also places the network much closer to other news channels like Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.

Time Warner Cable began carrying Al Jazeera America in October, boosting the network's availability to about 55 million homes, up from 44 million.

Financial terms of the deal between Time Warner and Qatar-owned Al Jazeera America were not disclosed, but The New York Times reported that Al Jazeera may actually pay Time Warner for marketing and advertising sales support.

Despite its increased availability, Al Jazeera America has still struggled with extremely low ratings. The channel is reportedly preparing a new marketing campaign to boost its presence in the United States.

Time Warner Cable has so far remained non-committal on whether it has any plans to carry Glenn Beck's network TheBlaze TV, described by Beck as an American alternative to Al Jazeera America.

“We’ve had discussions regarding carriage of [TheBlaze], but we don’t have an agreement,” Time Warner representative Maureen Huff has said.