GB News - Not Waving But Drowning

This week, Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”) was, in public at least, sounding bullish. There was to be £60 million of new investment in the broadcaster, viewer numbers were on occasion comparable with or better than other news channels, and a new line-up of presenters had been announced. Tomorrow belonged to them. Or maybe it didn’t.

The Guardian has reported that “US media group Warner Bros Discovery is to sell its stake in GB News, in a shake-up which has seen the loss-making television channel’s co-founders sell-up and resign as directors, and the remaining backers step forward with a further £60m in cash. The fledgling news channel, which originally said its first £60m fund raising last January would last three years, has tapped Legatum Ventures and hedge fund boss Paul Marshall for more funds after just 18 months”. There was more.

“The company also announced that co-founders Andrew Cole and Mark Schneider … have resigned as directors and sold their stakes in the business”. What might be the problem with this brand? “GB News … has had to deal with an advertising boycott by media agencies whose clients are wary of associating with the TV channel’s editorial stance”. Well, well.

As Stop Funding Hate has pointed out, “GB News might not like it, but [Stop Funding Hate] works“. Moreover, at current levels of spending, the channel will burn through that £60 million in just 18 months. Will Marshall and the people at Legatum keep on funding it then? Because if it’s still losing money at that rate, they won’t be in it for the rewards, but the ideology.

Even the new presenter announcement begged its own questions. Free sheet Metro told readers “GB News also announced … three new presenting appointments. The Telegraph’s Associate Editor Camilla Tominey, former politician Michael Portillo and broadcaster Andrew Pierce will join. Pierce and Portillo will both front programmes on the channel”. Ri-i-i-ght.

Pierce and Ms Tominey have had an occasional berth at LBC. So it has to be concluded that they’re leaving that broadcaster - and, as there have been no howls of protest from LBC’s parent company Global, it also has to be assumed that they have no problem with those departures. Maybe, whisper it quietly, they might have been let go, had they not jumped first.

Even the instantly recognisable mush of Michael Portillo begs questions as to why he joined: has the BBC axed his travel programs? And has GB News not stopped and thought that the reason Portillo’s rail expeditions went down so well with the viewers was because he mainly left the politics out of them? No pleasant scenery, no easily digested history, no transfer of viewers.

Yes, the channel will carry on for now: there will be more full-throated ranting from the deeply unpleasant Desperate Dan Wootton, former Brexit Party Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage, Tom Harwood, former teaboy to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog (and the only person ever to be Pwned by the Virgin Trains Twitter feed), and of course the crafty one himself, Darren Grimes, too stupid to fill in a form correctly.

But unless CEO Angelos Frangopoulos can transfer his shooting-the-mouth-off skills to eradicating the channel’s propensity to spray money up the wall, those backers are increasingly likely to tire of throwing more folding stuff in his general direction. Maybe GB News will end up like BSB - merged into a less deserving but more savvy and ruthlessly run Murdoch-backed rival.

So there will be fewer presenting and punditry opportunities, and maybe sooner than those in the GB News bunker think. There’s not much money to be made by pretending that the reality that is catching up with your audience isn’t happening. The cost of living crisis, a creaking NHS, extreme weather, industrial unrest, and the failure of Brexit, all will drive viewers away.

GB News is not yet dead and buried. But you can see it from here.

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