GB News - Farage NOT Smashing It

The Daily Brexit, still called the Express, cheered former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage’s effect on viewing figures for Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”): “GB NEWS launched as a news channel earlier this year, and its ratings have been far from spectacular at points. But the recent arrival of Nigel Farage appears to have had a staggering effect on the channel's popularity”.

There was more. “On July 28, Mr Farage's 7pm slot managed to attract more viewers than BBC and Sky. Mr Farage's GB News show was watched by 107,700 viewers, while BBC's Outside Source was watched by 93,300 … The success appears to have continued, as Mr Farage's show on August 5 raked in 145,100 views, according to Guido Fawkes, beating BBC News' 113,100 views and Sky News' 29,100”. Two things here.

One, this is the BBC News Channel being used as a comparator, not BBC1 or BBC2. And Two, taking the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog on trust never ends well: apart from the use of two nights’ numbers being highly selective, the rest of GB News’ output is still faring badly in the viewer attraction stakes.

As former BBC man Robert Says has, er, said, Mr Thirsty may have scored 145k viewers on the evening of 5 August. But by the next hour, GB News had lost more than 100k of those viewers, and its average for the 1900 hours to 0100 hours period was 46k - Farage, Dan Wootton and all. Farage beat the BBC News Channel just twice that week, and the evening after his 145k viewer triumph, GB News scored only 27k viewers in that slot.

Worse for GB News, and indeed any prospective advertisers, the week after Nige’s success, GB News’ average audience for the day dropped to as few as 15k viewers on one day, and did not exceed 23k - and that’s for the days when the Farage show aired.

By 12 August, GB News was scoring a paltry 4k viewers in the 0900 to 1000 hour, and after 2100 hours - hello Dan Wootton - was managing only 29k. Worse still, Farage pulled in just 64k viewers that evening - 50k fewer than the BBC News Channel. And Robert Says had one more point to make about the alleged Farage effect.

“According to one newspaper report Nigel Farage has had a 'staggering effect' on GB News's numbers. Average number of people who watched GB News on: 18 June (approx. a week after launch): 38k … 16 July (approx. a month after launch): 18k … 12 August (yesterday): 17k”. Or fewer than 15% of the audience required for GB News to become viable. Which also needs the channel to bring in and retain advertisers.

And the advertisers are under constant scrutiny, then informal pressure, by the loose coalition of Led By Donkeys, Stop Funding Hate and Ripples. The effect of Nigel Farage’s arrival at GB News has been rather less than “staggering”, the channel is yet to see the return of chairman Andrew Neil, and its lurches to the far right are thus far ineffective.

The Farage Factor alone will not save GB News. Just rejoice at that news.

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