4 days ago
GB News is coming for the BBC and Sky
Photo by Simon Dack / Alamy Live News
'We are ending the dominance of the BBC News Channel and Sky News,' crowed GB News's head of programming, Ben Briscoe, as he heralded new viewing figures for the station last month. While there is some degree of selective reporting in Briscoe's numbers, there's no doubt GB News did beat its rivals in several key slots in July. It's both an impressive and terrifying gain for the broadcaster, which only launched four years ago but aims to be Britain's biggest UK news channel by 2028.
Presumably, rioting outside migrant hotels and talk about impending civil unrest is good for business. Online, GB News had an audience of ten million in June (around half that of Sky and a quarter of the BBC). One former Sky journalist has little doubt GB News will reach its 2028 target, saying: 'When big stories break people still want the BBC and Sky, but the rest of the time there are a lot of viewers happy to sit and have their prejudices repeated back to them all day long.'
Yet still it is making losses: GB News, which is bankrolled by its owner, Paul Marshall, and the Dubai-based investment firm Legatum, lost $33.4m in 2023-24. Nigel Farage alone has earned £330,000 since July 2024. 'The losses are now utterly irrelevant,' one former insider said. 'Since Reform's polling kicked off, it is felt every penny is money well spent.'
An end to wokery awaits The Yorkshire Shepherdess and Cruising with Jane McDonald because Channel 5 falls under the ownership of Skydance Media, as part of an $8bn mega-deal. The British broadcaster is owned by Paramount Global, which is to be taken over by the US billionaire David Ellison (recently spotted hanging out UFC ringside with Donald Trump). The deal was signed off by the US TV regulator after Ellison pledged to end all diversity, equity and inclusion programmes and Paramount shelled out $16m to settle a legal battle with Trump over the editing of the 60 Minutes Kamala Harris interview. There's a rumoured side deal of $20m of free ads for Trump.
Friends of the London-based Channel 5 boss, Sarah Rose, are worried about how she will cope under the new regime. Just months ago she wrote: 'We are dedicated to creating an inclusive and equitable workplace,' and the channel has a 'no diversity, no commission' pledge on its website. Staff are concerned the channel's new owner might not just be looking for a culture change, but hoping to offload it entirely – or to ditch its £200m annual budget for original commissioning, in favour of a return to the dark old days under Richard Desmond when schedules were filled with reruns of US imports.
ITV has been busy ramping up excitement for The Hack, which tells how the Guardian journalist Nick Davies uncovered phone hacking at the News of the World in 2011. There are such high hopes that the drama will be the next Mr Bates vs the Post Office that Mr Bates (aka Toby Jones) appears as Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger. Also starring is Trainspotting's Robert Carlyle, who leads the inquiry into the murder of the private investigator Daniel Morgan – a case that remains unsolved and which raised serious questions about corrupt relationships between Met detectives and newspaper staff. 'Put it this way,' one former News of the World journo told me: 'if you thought the Trainspotting toilet scene was about swimming in shit, that's nothing compared with what went on in the Daniel Morgan case.'
Mentions on the BBC about the launch of Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana's temporarily named Your Party have largely been of the blink-and-you'll-miss-it variety. And yet the party already claims to have 650,000 sign ups – which rather casts shade on Reform UK's (admittedly paying) membership, currently 231,721. Still, Reform is assured bountiful BBC coverage if Farage so much as sneezes. BBC journalists are keen to reset what has been a fractious relationship with Corbyn, but grumble that how little air time he is permitted lies in editors' hands.
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Further trouble for the broadcaster awaits,as yet more licence-fee money is being spent on another investigation by external lawyers. This time, tens of thousands are being earmarked to probe allegations that two Strictly Come Dancing stars were regularly taking cocaine while on the show. The investigation into the former newsreader Huw Edwards cost around £400,000 (plus another £1m for a review of complaints procedures) and £3.3m was spent investigating claims against DJ Tim Westwood. As one BBC journo put it: 'I've decided the only way I'll ever get a pay rise here is to retrain as an HR lawyer.'
Farewell, then, to MailOnline, the home of the sidebar of shame and 40-word headlines. The site is now to be known simply as Daily Mail – a nod to its print history. Although that is cold comfort for its few remaining staff who originated in print. 'The coup is now complete,' one said. 'It may now be called Daily Mail but we have been totally overtaken by the online staff. They know how to get the clicks, but they haven't got the first clue about how to find a proper story.'
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[See also: Inside the factions of the new left]
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