GB News Patriotism FLOPS

The inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker could hardly contain themselves earlier this week as they frothed “'A proud moment for British broadcasting!:' GB News viewers react with joy as TV channel begins its daily viewing with National Anthem for first time … GB News played the National Anthem this morning at 5.59am before live show”.

There was more. “The move comes following calls for the BBC to do so from Tories last week … Video footage of sights across the UK at dawn accompanied the iconic tune”. How does a tune get to be “iconic”? What’s the deal, anyway? “GB News honoured its pledge to play the National Anthem every morning today, airing God Save the Queen over a drone-shot montage of scenery just before 6am”. Big deal. So who cares?

Tory MP Andrew Rosindell apparently cares a lot. He cared so much that he “had excitedly trailed it at 11pm last night, exclaiming: 'A proud moment for British broadcasting! At 5.59am GB News will start the day with the National Anthem of our country, whilst showing magnificent scenery from around the United Kingdom. 'What a beautiful way to begin this historic Platinum Jubilee year!’” Brutus Moriartus, this man is a bit of a crawler.

 

He had even stood up in the Commons and asked “I know the minister will agree that the singing of the national anthem is something that provides great sense of unity and pride in our nation … So in this year of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, will the minister take steps to encourage public broadcasters to play the national anthem and ensure the BBC restores it at the end of the day's programming before it switches to News 24?”

Of course, the Beeb used to play it at close of transmission, but now BBC1 broadcasts 24 hours a day, so there is no close of transmission. Radio 4 still does. Whatever: was there any tangible benefit in terms of actual viewers? GB News has not exactly been inundated with those most of the day, barring Nigel “Thirsty” Farage’s nightly rantfest.

Sadly, no they weren’t: the Tweeter known as Robert Says had the data, which by yesterday made for grim reading. “48 hours after this game-changing, proud moment for British broadcasting, the number of people watching at 6am on Thursday morning … GB News: 1k … Sky News: 20k … BBC News Channel: 40k … Good Morning Britain: 153k … BBC Breakfast: 451k”. And there was bad news for Mr Thirsty, too.

“Speaking of 'game-changers' for British broadcasting (or was it called the moment the BBC and Sky were about to be 'crushed'!?) the average number of people on 21/01 [think he means 20/01) who tuned in from 19h00 to 20h00 on … BBC News Channel: 152k … Sky News: 137k … GB News: 55k”. Farage viewers getting bored already.

Worse still, Tom Jamieson interpreted those numbers to show how dire GB News’ situation really is. “And as a wise TV ratings person explained to me once, anything under 50k is total guesswork & could be nothing, so 1k could literally be three people”. Or half a dozen especially thirsty individuals anticipating opening time at their local Spoons.

Whichever way you slice it, GB News and its cheerleaders are failing miserably to persuade the viewing public to tune in to its daily festival of right-leaning propaganda.

Must be burning through all those startup funds pretty rapidly by now. Sad, really.

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