“You read it here first. Al Jazeera International will launch in November. And not November 2010 either. This November.” [MG]

Yes, the old crystal ball is still working…of course when I wrote that for Press Gazette back in June, Al Jazeera International probably didn’t know they would be on air in November. Early this month there were executives saying it would be either November or next March. So, it would be stupid to crow, but what the heck! Along with my prediction that Christmas will fall on December 25th this year, it’s one of my better ones.

Behind the politics that people love so much, there are the technical issues of co-ordinating a breaking news channel broadcasting from four different locations. Anyone who has ever fitted out a digital newsroom will know that the promises made by the people who provide the software to achieve the digital miracle don’t exactly make for a smooth ride. Ensuring that different companies’ components talk to each other can be harder than they said on the stall at IBC.

But there are politics behind it. Politics moves in when economics moves out. The pressing commercial need for AJI has yet to be established. Someone with a lot of money wanted to do it – it’s happening. The bitterness emanating from the Arab original spilled out in Yousri Fouda, Al Jazeera’s chief reporter, condemning AJI as a waste of money. A boardroom coup saw Wadah Khanfar installed as AJI’s super-boss over the head of Nigel Parsons.

Parsons would still be my pick for first post-launch casualty. His job is done, and Steve Clarke will take on the editorial running of the place. Clarke once ran a channel called MBC, but his last gig (two years ago now!) was editing the Richard Littlejohn show on Sky News.

Someone that Parsons tapped up for a job has got half a dozen digital channels on the air in the time he’s taken to establish one. But that’s not the point. This chip off the Anglo-Saxon news block has developed what could be an iconic news brand, as important to the next decade as CNN was to the 80s, and Fox to the 90s.

And will it be any good? It’s all very well to talk editorial values but if you want to impose character on a 24-hour news channel, you have to do it from the gallery and studio floor, not in a memo. Exactly whose vision is waiting to be imposed on the new channel – Wadah Khanfar’s or Steve Clarke’s? Guess we’ll have to wait for their first big story to find out…