Live From Qatar

Nigel Parsons zips through his day like any other top media executive. He has just dispatched his programming director to visit independent production houses in London, and shortly he will hold a personnel meeting with his news director. But in ticking off the specs for his new global headquarters, Parsons illustrates why there is nothing ordinary about his job. "We'll have an open-plan newsroom, and we hope to put in a small gym," he explains as he surveys the building site, a former parking lot in the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar. After a brief pause, he adds, "And the prayer rooms--don't forget the prayer rooms!"

As the boss of al-Jazeera International, Parsons is creating from scratch an English-language sister channel to the controversial Arabic broadcaster best known in the West for bringing Osama bin Laden to the world's television screens. In early 2006, al-Jazeera's English channel plans to start going head to head with the likes of CNN and the BBC in the battle for consumers of 24-hour news. The channel's budget is a closely guarded secret, as are the identities of the distributors and advertisers it is wooing, but al-Jazeera is clearly aiming high. "We think it is a fairly tired old industry," Parsons, 53, the son of a British army officer once stationed in the Middle East, says with a mildly cocky air. "We are quite happy to shake it up."

The idea is bold. The founding of al-Jazeera International marks the first time that a broadcaster based in the developing world will transmit English news and current-affairs shows to viewers throughout the U.S., Europe and the rest of the developed world. And there's more to come from al-Jazeera and its fabulously petro-rich bankroller, the government of the tiny state of Qatar. The English channel is the centerpiece of a plan to transform the company into a media powerhouse with greater clout in the Middle East and far beyond. "We are expanding to become a major international media group," al-Jazeera chairman Sheik Hamad bin Thamer al-Thani explained in a TIME interview. "The market is open. Our ambition is to be among the big broadcasters of the world."

It won't be easy, not the least because of al-Jazeera's reputation in the West for having an anti-American, pro-Arab bias. The network may have money to expand without worrying too much about revenue from potentially skittish advertisers: Qatar's Emir underwrites roughly 60% of the government-owned network's estimated $85 million annual budget. But whether the English channel will be able to wrest spots on U.S. cable networks or persuade satellite services to run its programming, not to mention grab an audience, is unclear. Even Arab Americans tend to watch other cable news stations, like Fox News and CNN, instead of al-Jazeera in Arabic, which is available in the U.S. on some satellite systems.