Al Jazeera America now has a launch date, as it continues to staff up. AJAM will launch Tuesday, August 20, according to Ali Velshi on Twitter. AJAM will be taking over the channel space currently occupied by Current TV in some 40 million U.S. homes.
Earlier this month, Al Jazeera’s executive in charge of AJAM, Ehab Al Shihabi, said they expected to launch the week of August 24.
Al Jazeera America has still not announced who its chief executive will be, although we hear that a decision has been made on who the final candidate is. AJAM is believed to be hiring for two roles: a chief executive and a chief programmer. The chief executive would be responsible for day-to-day oversight of the channel, with the chief programmer overseeing content, with a dotted line to Al Jazeera headquarters in Doha.
Despite the fact that it does not have a chief executive or chief programmer, AJAM has been staffing up under Al Shihabi, adding former CNNers Velshi and Soledad O’Brien, and announcing a U.S.-centric version of “The Stream.”