FTVLive was chatting with a Network Executive on Friday Afternoon and we started discussing the upcoming launch of Al Jazeera America.

We both agreed that the channel will be hard pressed to pull any decent ratings for any of their shows.

But, the Net Exec said something about the Al Jazeera hires. "They are hiring a bunch of has beens or never was's and they are lacking a major star," said the Executive.

The statement seemed kind of harsh, but was it off base? Al Jazeera has hired some people of have heard of in the past, but many of them were out of work and on the beach.

The network suit called them the "B-listers of TV news" Antonio Mora, John Seigenthaler, Joie Chen and Del Walters are some of the names. Yesterday they announced former MSNBC anchor David Shuster was also joining the network.

AJA seems to be lacking that big name that might induce viewer sampling when the network is expected to hit the air in 10 days.

You can bet that there will be many times the network will get just hash marks for ratings.

As he Network Executive said, the other cable news channels may watch them out of curiosity, but no one else will.

As we said, it sounds cold, but it may in fact be true.

Stay tuned...