GB News going live May 31st


With a budget of £23m they’ll be finished by Christmas

You’d assume that whatever the budget is, their business plan says they can operate within it. Time will tell.

Plenty of big ticket advertising, which is good to see given the spiteful “boycott” campaigns amongst the usual sections of the Twitterati. Could be awkward for them to campaign for a boycott of the World Wildlife Fund.
If Andrew Doyle is the tip to be the highlight then it will not be worth watching at all. He’s just spouted more cliched stuff about cancel culture and nonsense stories about body feeding and chest feeding. It really is lowest common denominator stuff they’ve discussed so far.

Despite all the noise around it before it even launched, I genuinely hoped it wouldn’t be what many were saying it was going to be. But it clearly is going to be that. It’s beneath some of these presenters.

They haven’t actually broadcast anything substantive yet. Surely it’s too early to declare that it’s anything in particular?
 
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You’d assume that whatever the budget is, their business plan says they can operate within it. Time will tell.

Plenty of big ticket advertising, which is good to see given the spiteful “boycott” campaigns amongst the usual sections of the Twitterati. Could be awkward for them to campaign for a boycott of the World Wildlife Fund.


They haven’t actually broadcast anything substantive yet. Surely it’s too early to declare that it’s anything in particular?

The first hour has been dedicated to talking about anti-woke, cancel culture and typical ‘free speech’ type stuff. They’ve set the agenda and it’s clearly going to be an echo chamber.

There is nothing new or alternative about it. They’ve so far shown us a TGI Fridays menu in a world already occupied by Frankie and Bennys.
 
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The first hour has been dedicated to talking about anti-woke, cancel culture and typical ‘free speech’ type stuff. They’ve set the agenda and it’s clearly going to be an echo chamber.

Aren’t all of those things necessarily anti-echo chamber? Isn’t that the point?

Mind you - they’ve played in to the hands of the hystericals by booking Farage on the first night. It’ll help them in their quest to cast the channel as Brownshirt TV.
 
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You’d assume that whatever the budget is, their business plan says they can operate within it. Time will tell.

Plenty of big ticket advertising, which is good to see given the spiteful “boycott” campaigns amongst the usual sections of the Twitterati.

This will play out with all the regional people getting sacked to save money.

Then a couple of the big names will leave because it’s bollocks.

Then the people left won’t have any gravitas to succeed.

£23m is fuck all. Sky News has a budget of £90m and runs at a loss in excess of £10m per year.

One of the people who’ve been on tonight used to work for me. He was terrible 20 years ago - awful attitude. If that’s the calibre they’ve hired they’re in trouble already, IMO.
 
This will play out with all the regional people getting sacked to save money.

Then a couple of the big names will leave because it’s bollocks.

Then the people left won’t have any gravitas to succeed.

£23m is fuck all. Sky News has a budget of £90m and runs at a loss in excess of £10m per year.

One of the people who’ve been on tonight used to work for me. He was terrible 20 years ago - awful attitude. If that’s the calibre they’ve hired they’re in trouble already, IMO.

You may well be right, and it sounds like you know more about the industry than I do. So fair enough. Time will tell. You’d just assume that to take the channel to air at all, the figures must have added up.
No. None of those things are anti echo-chamber. There’s plenty of that discourse on every other broadcasting station in the country and on the front pages of 90% of the nations newspapers.

I have to say, I’m struggling to see how a push back against cancel culture and an overt support for free speech, could be conducive in themselves to an “echo chamber”.

Whether or not there’s an echo chamber on the channel, will be down to whether or not they practice what they preach - and give an open platform to various voices and views.
To be fair - having Benjamin Butterworth as a guest/commentator on the first programme doesn’t exactly scream “right wing echo chamber”.
 
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You may well be right, and it sounds like you know more about the industry than I do. So fair enough. Time will tell. You’d just assume that to take the channel to air at all, the figures must have added up.


I have to say, I’m struggling to see how a push back against cancel culture and an overt support for free speech, could be conducive in themselves to an “echo chamber”.

Whether or not there’s an echo chamber on the channel, will be down to whether or not they practice what they preach - and give an open platform to various voices and views.

So far it has been a lot of people agreeing with each other that there is a woke cancel culture prevailing and that people can’t express their views without being cancelled. That’s more than a debatable topic given the state of British political discourse and the prominence of particular people in positions of power and influence.

Nothing said so far has been remotely challenging and the vast majority of people hired don’t have a track record of anything other than right wing rhetoric.
 
£23m is fuck all. Sky News has a budget of £90m and runs at a loss in excess of £10m per year.
Lost £40M last year I believe. Read something the other day about how news channels generally all lose quite a bit of money, the ones that keep going have very deep pockets and get losses covered by other parts of the wider business. Doesnt sound great for this lot.
 
So far it has been a lot of people agreeing with each other that there is a woke cancel culture prevailing and that people can’t express their views without being cancelled. That’s more than a debatable topic given the state of British political discourse and the prominence of particular people in positions of power and influence.

Nothing said so far has been remotely challenging and the vast majority of people hired don’t have a track record of anything other than right wing rhetoric.

Like I said - the very first programme in the channels life, and they’ve got Benjamin Butterworth on as a main guest. Notwithstanding that there’ll probably be a twitter campaign now to declare him a fascist, he’s decidedly not right wing and he’s unlikely to nod through an “anti woke” angle on anything.
 
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This will play out with all the regional people getting sacked to save money.

Then a couple of the big names will leave because it’s bollocks.

Then the people left won’t have any gravitas to succeed.

£23m is fuck all. Sky News has a budget of £90m and runs at a loss in excess of £10m per year.

One of the people who’ve been on tonight used to work for me. He was terrible 20 years ago - awful attitude. If that’s the calibre they’ve hired they’re in trouble already, IMO.
Rachel Sweeney from up here left ITV for this, see how things develop but tonight has been quite poor.
 
Rachel Sweeney from up here left ITV for this, see how things develop but tonight has been quite poor.

Just seen her ranting on Twitter about Royal Mail. Says a lot more about the set-up than Royal Mail in all honesty.
Lost £40M last year I believe. Read something the other day about how news channels generally all lose quite a bit of money, the ones that keep going have very deep pockets and get losses covered by other parts of the wider business. Doesnt sound great for this lot.

That’s exactly how it works.

Hard to see where they’ll make any money.
 
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Just seen her ranting on Twitter about Royal Mail. Says a lot more about the set-up than Royal Mail in all honesty.


That’s exactly how it works.

Hard to see where they’ll make any money.

Maybe the ultimate aim of those behind/funding it isn’t to make money? Maybe they’re prepared to underwrite a loss in an attempt to forward an agenda/change the conversation if they can?

No idea if that’s true here - but there’s more benefit to owning/controlling a news outlet than simply the direct profit.
 
Maybe the ultimate aim of those behind/funding it isn’t to make money? Maybe they’re prepared to underwrite a loss in an attempt to forward an agenda/change the conversation if they can?

No idea if that’s true here - but there’s more benefit to owning/controlling a news outlet than simply the direct profit.

bang on...I’m sure it’s more about getting a view across than making money.
 
Maybe the ultimate aim of those behind/funding it isn’t to make money? Maybe they’re prepared to underwrite a loss in an attempt to forward an agenda/change the conversation if they can?

No idea if that’s true here - but there’s more benefit to owning/controlling a news outlet than simply the direct profit.

TV news is dead.

Once the fanfare is over and done with they’ll struggle.

If you can afford to write off £10m a year and your objective is to change the conversation then you might as well start a blog like the Huffington Post - it would be much more effective, IMO.

The journalists they’ve hired (excluding Andrew Neil and the old fella from ITV) wouldn’t say boo to a Goose at their previous employers - they’re hardly going to start doing it now and surely that is where the conversation gap is.
 
TV news is dead.

Once the fanfare is over and done with they’ll struggle.

If you can afford to write off £10m a year and your objective is to change the conversation then you might as well start a blog like the Huffington Post - it would be much more effective, IMO.

The journalists they’ve hired (excluding Andrew Neil and the old fella from ITV) wouldn’t say boo to a Goose at their previous employers - they’re hardly going to start doing it now.

Im not sure this is going to be TV news in the usual sense, notwithstanding the name.

Looks like it’s going to be a string of different current affairs/debate programmes.
 

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