Andrew Neil’s GB News show

BBC journalist Amol Rajan said on the radio this afternoon that it will launch "later this year". It sounds like it's been delayed.

With programme ideas like that I don't think Sky are going to be that worried about GBeebies.

Problem is once they start they're not allowed to axe any of their programmes or presenters as that would be cancel culture

I remember the days when Andrew Neil was a respectable journalist.

"Wokewatch" is now trending on Twitter. It's certainly going to be an interesting watch.

By the lack of any serious system integration chatter (I've not seen any technical staff, and not even a CTO appointment in my corner of LinkedIn) it could just be a cheap and cheerful pro-sumer set up with a load of BlackMagic and AJA stuff lashed together by technically minded types. Think more London Live, than LNN!

As is 'Gammon'. Which is also interesting.

Made the mistake of checking out what the inevitably vile non woke take on the Sarah Everard story was. "Interesting" isn't the word.

Andrew Neil was on the Media Show with Amol Rajan on Radio 4 today.

Extended podcast version of the interview out Thursday afternoon on the Media Show feed.

Some new info:

- AN’s show will run from 8pm for an hour, four nights a week.

- it will open with a monologue

- it will have lots of short items that can be sliced up for social sharing.

- regular features will include ‘Woke Watch’ and Media Watch.

- there will be regular guests each night (trying to emulate the Abbott and Portillo dynamic on This Week).

1/ Spoke to @afneil for well over an hour on Monday. Long version available tomorrow via #THEMEDIASHOW podcast. In an excerpt for our live show 16.30 @BBCRadio4 he reveals:
>@GBNEWS HQ is in Paddington
>Format of his show includes monologue, Wokewatch and Mediawatch
>Loads more

— Amol Rajan (@amolrajan) March 10, 2021

I don't think I was expecting more than that anyway, and why would they go for a broadcast solution when it can be done like that. Is it even being broadcast, I've lost track? When most of its output sounds like it's going to be men sitting at desks ranting, what more do they need? Their intended audience seem happy with sharing and watching that sort of quality video shot on static cameras in a Talk Radio studio.

The question is what their ambitions are in terms of news, with that sort of set up Colin Brazier isn't going to have the same sort of experience there as he does at Sky, especially when there's breaking news.

If they want to be a channel that does news coverage their first test will be the first big story and how they cover that. Will their coverage of a Royal death or a foreign terror attack be their equivalent of TVam at the Brighton Bomb or will they be able to do something different and impressive with limited resources?

Well, quite so Inspector, I'm just trying to quell the disappoint from some, who on day one will be asking where's the huge starship enterprise style newsroom, where's the jibs, where's the spidercam™ shooting over Andrew Neil's head, where's the live OBs.

On the one hand, as we have seen from their fundraising, they've got the budget and backers to operate within the norms of UK TV technical standards, with reasonable kit.

In defense of the London Live approach though, I actually think the technical standards there were pretty decent for a local channel - it was the dire content that let them down. The robots and those Nikon DSLR cameras have produced some great-looking pictures... that get degraded further down the chain before tx.

I would say that out of the two projects, it's probably News UK who seem more likely to be going to air with a couple of DSLRs and a copy of vMix (though, for the record, I think that's unlikely too!).

Though it's not a 24 hour rolling news style network - more 'appointment to view' shows - so they may be taking a different route and using third party facilities, say booking space at somewhere like IMG Studios, Westminster Live or Celebro (which is quite Tricaster/Black Magic-y to be fair) etc., at least initially (which is an agile way to launch potentially without burning through a lot of capital)

Discovery, who are partially backing it, have playout facilities that could presumably be used to run the playout side (commercials and pre-recorded shows). Discovery also have a reasonably large gallery complex in Chiswick for Northern European Eurosport use (Scandinavian control rooms remotely use the kit in Chiswick for example), but I don't think there is studio presence there.

I don't think anyone should expect a Sky News / BBC News Channel style 24-hour newsroom operation - this feels very much more like a number of, probably quite long, talking head type shows - rather than an operation with a large reporting and news packaging set-up.