GB News

I assume they've done the research to find it is.

Finding a gap in the market to introduce a new product and an audience being underserved are not the same thing.

"Forgotten and underserved" are deliberately chosen loaded words.

If you actually read the press release instead of using your own biases, it clearly states that they're targeting an audience which feels that mainstream news is centred on London where there are people who feel that it doesn't represent their views or standpoint.

It's a legitimate feeling to have and as Jon correctly mentions, it's an untapped market that hasn't been marketed properly. talkRADIO despite the publicity it has had recently has a cult following online from people who supported Brexit and the anti-mask crusade.

Where GB News and these other outlets have to do is tread carefully between treating opinion as fact, they need to treat news as fact, while opinion needs to be made clear is that of the contributors and isn't actual news.

Both left-wing and right-wing 'news' websites and video channels are equally as guilty of providing misinformation which can be interpreted as gospel by viewers. We have a situation tonight where a Trump supporter died in The Capitol today because she and thousands of supporters were fed misinformation by Trump and pro-Trump platforms that fed them what they wanted to hear.

No doubt they'll be based in London though, although the press release saying that might add some weight to the theory they'll be piggy backing on some of the local networks.

I think the problem is the events of the last few years have kind of forced people to entrench themselves in their own believes and it is very difficult to be convinced otherwise. Everything we've seen so far about GB News screams "Brexit" so even if they did do a half decent job it's going to be difficult to shake off that perception.

I thought I read somewhere that their reporters would be based in towns/cities across the UK instead of London/Westminster? Anyone else remember seeing similar?

Every news organisation has reporters based in cities across the UK. If they're trying to use that as a point of difference to begin with they're launching on a lie.

I hate it when people make their mind up about something before it's even launched.

It's the same with new on screen graphics package rollouts. People will see a leaked blurry, taken from distance on a smartphone pointing at a monitor 3 metres away, part obscured by someone's head zoomed in still and make their minds up based on that.

I suspect they will talk up being an outside of London centric focus - but will probably still have their studios in London.

I am withholding judgement until I see their output and editorial slant - but the description smacks of the same Conservative myth of being ignored by the "Mainstream Media", and having Conservative voices stymied or silenced. Especially in the US there are umpteen outlets for the kind of right wing opinions and "hate" (my opinion here) - and it makes their voting base feel more angry against the rest of society, in the hopes it will bolster their votes.

Tories here will talk about political bias in a hope to get their voters to distrust any source of news than those aligned to the Tory political messages.

GB News is parroting the same language, and whilst Andrew Neil in his role as editor of the Spectator believes in free-speech - at some point they will need to accept that some of their views are distasteful to many in society, and will end up fringe voices shouting into the wind.

But I am biased against right wing political arguments, so I may well be reading too much into it. And GB News may surprise us by featuring not only Right Wing fringe views, but also Left Wing fringe views - without any obvious editorialising for or against either.

If they're smart, they won't make this a true news channel so much as a politics channel, and thus appeal to people of diverse, 'underserved' views because at any time of day they will be able to turn on and find people who share their views, even if the channel actually presents a balance of opinion.

If you watch MSNBC or Fox, and to a large extent CNN, their running orders are not like the BBC's or Sky's news channels. They will cover other news – especially big, breaking news stories, or items that are likely to be of significant interest to viewers (e.g. high-profile trials). But for the most part, they cover stories that are rooted in politics or have a clear political angle almost non-stop. And they cover this through the big use of roundtables and multi-participant discussions during the day and straight-to-camera monologues followed by interview or discussion in primetime. Very few packaged reports, very few reminders of headlines, and entirely live content almost all day during the week. It's relatively cheap to produce compared to a true news network (although all have extensive networks of reporters, producers and crews), while the constant discussion and live nature makes it 'unmissable' (compared to a UK channel, where few people would watch more than 20 minutes at a time). It's the television equivalent of talk radio, not CBS News.

Crucially, they don't have a problem putting individuals with questionable journalistic ability into presenter/host roles – former politicians, political strategists/aides, pundits, lawyers and others, along with more traditional journalists. I'd expect GB News to go down a similar route – a mix of people like Majiid Nawaz (increasingly espousing non-mainstream, borderline-conspiracy theory views and takes on twitter and on LBC), Daily Mail columnists, disgruntled former political correspondents or ex-BBC hosts and others. And because they spend more time talking about the politics of it – pundit 1 complaining about how 'the left' are doing X, or 'Trump wants Y', viewers feel like the 'news' is being presented to them from a viewpoint they relate to. But in reality, it's more opinion than reporting. And as LBC has shown, you can do that with a political balance, across a whole day, while giving viewers/listeners the partisan/ideological perspective/relatability they can't identify in straight news, and therefore become suspicious of.

The question, I think, is whether they can attract a significant enough audience to turn a profit. Convincing people to watch a new television channel is difficult, particularly in primetime, and the UK has a much smaller market than the US. I can see clips of GB News going viral on social media, but I'd be surprised if a TV/streaming channel attracts an average audience of more than 20/30,000 viewers. And if it doesn't have much of an audience, it's hard to imagine them successfully attracting many high-profile, credible or popular hosts, commentators or guests in the long-run without spending a shed load of money on them.


It's no secret TalkRadio has struggled to build a sizeable audience, and I haven't seen any public reporting about how TimesRadio is doing?

It’ll be more like an hour of GMB (minus the interviews with Katherine Jenkins etc) than an hour of general Sky News. If people want to see someone reading out summaries they know where to go.