Failure of GB News is a warning to the right
An alternative to the BBC is welcome but the channel has turned into a humourless echo chamber for Ukip supporters
Does this mean I could get a show?
Apart from that face made for radio thing?
GB News is looking to hire more of Nigel Farage’s former Brexit party stablemates as channel bosses look set to rebuild the station as a full-throated culture war outlet after the departure of Andrew Neil.
“Failure of GB News” – has it failed? It’s only been on telly for about 5 minutes and I heard they were doing ok by the low standards of TV news.
Still think it probably will fail tho, due to TV being a dying medium hemorrhoiding advertisers. But not yet surely?
Channel appears to be moving further right with liberal voices squeezed out and Brexiters reported to be set to join
Yarp. There’s no shortage of “liberal” voices on BBC 24, Sky News, ITN News, Newsnight, Question Time, Channel 4 News, John Craven’s Newsround…
Makes no sense to have them on the Gammon Channel, does it?
Has GBN failed, other than in the wet-dreams of left-leaning MSM “jornalists”? It appears regularly to tot up a viewership that’s greater than Sky News and the BBC News Channel added together. Odd criteria for “failure” IMHO.
GBN can’t be failing or these ‘liberal’ cunts wouldn’t be lining up to have a pop at it.
I note that GBN is also getting stick in faux-conservative rags like the Terriblegraph and Spectator. No doubt the appeasers and wets who infest these titles are horrified at the prospect of actual conservatives showing them up.
Front Page headline: HALF A MILLION IN UK TO DIE FROM COVID*!!
Bottom of page 17, in a small font size, below today’s horoscopes & above an advert for pile cream:
* Possibly, and only acccording to the output a computer model designed a Professor who has been consistently wildly incorrect with every prediction he has made. Ever.
MSM = Get the headline out there and don’t give a fuck whether it’s wrong or not.
Steve,
““Failure of GB News” – has it failed? It’s only been on telly for about 5 minutes and I heard they were doing ok by the low standards of TV news.
Still think it probably will fail tho, due to TV being a dying medium hemorrhoiding advertisers. But not yet surely?”
It’ll never work. Everyone talks about Fox News, but at peak, it gets 2 million viewers. And nearly all of those are over 55 and advertisers don’t spend much to reach those people. In terms of 25-54 year olds, they get 300,000 viewers at peak. Now divide that by 5 for the number of people in the UK.
Most people watch the news because it’s on. They’ve just finished watching a show, and it’s the news. Anyone serious about news is online now. Plus it’s mostly the same turgid shit that every other news channel does. I’d rather watch the Trigonometry interviews on YouTube which have some fascinating guests.
I only watch it on YouTube but I like it… They have some excellent presenters IMHO.
Not sure if they can make cash out of people only watching it on-line. I like Talk Radio but I never watch it live because of all the ads, just the YouTube bits.
And nearly all of those are over 55 and advertisers don’t spend much to reach those people
I wonder why, considering the huge amounts of cash the over-55s have.
BoM4 – Yarp
It’s not going to get better for traditional TV either, it’s now officially an Old People medium. While it’s true that new old people are born every day, the under-40’s don’t watch broadcast telly, and aren’t going to change their habits due to oldness. They watch streaming services and their smartphones. When they reach geriatritude, I assume they’ll be drooling and watching Tik Tok Classic.
“…hemorrhoiding advertisers…”
We know what you meant but this is better somehow.
Would they be open to hiring me as a voice of Liberal Leave, or would that make their heads explode?
MC,
“I wonder why, considering the huge amounts of cash the over-55s have.”
The problem is that over-55s don’t buy lifestyle brands. Most advertising today isn’t about telling you that Product X has better features than Product Y. It’s about lifestyle, that buying a brand of vodka, clothing or ice cream makes you sexier, more woke, whatever. When it works, the pay off is a massive multiplier. Spectacles that are no better than Boots own sell for 5 times the price.
Older people are wiser and more experienced and know this shit makes no difference and buy on value and quality. Aldi Vodka rather than Absolut.
Stick in an application, they might recognise your name
I already know someone there and am thus a step ahead of that. Thought is happening.
Does this mean I could get a show?
Paid guest spot, maybe. Unless you can hire studio time / production value locally.
Also, you have wisdom and insight based on experience plus intelligence. Is there much demand for that on TV news?
@PJF
I expect there’s an audience for watching folk who sound just like Polly and Owen and XR and EU persons et al being figuratively disembowelled and hoist with their own petard and made to look like idiots, because that’s always fun.
It might even bring in eyeballs from those afflicted classes, complaining bitterly via whatever on-line presence GBN has, boosting clickability.
Especially when the idiots’ views are shown to be completely in line with those we wish to do down, like vile Socialists, vile Greens, loathsome Princess NutNuts etc
And for contrast, the calm rational voice of Bjorn Lomberg, or The Ghost of Adam Smith (never interpreted, always reading from his own works) could be introduced for a discussion about what or who might do what to improve life.
Plus little teaching sessions on basic economics and reality. Plus some advanced stuff, where we show that society (and its industrial and merchant activities) is also a fragile ecology, and that doing X could put the cost of cellphones up by 8.5x; or the cost of desired stuff at favourite supermarket up by 3.7x; or even – your electricity bills are going to multiply by 73x per unit of leccy, but don’t worry, you’ll only get some one day a week if Z ever happens (and it happens once every 2.3 years) Etc.
But I dream.
Interesting thought… regular guest spots from Tim, Madsen Pirie, Eamonn Butler, Kristian Niemietz and the like. Would be an interesting counterpoint to economics as presented by failed music teachers on the bbc.
TV is a visual medium but GB News only uses voice. It would work far better as a radio station, if LBC didn’t already fill that niche.
I watch it on You Tube. It uses a plethora of media including Facebook too. So it’s not just TV. It needs bulletins too.
I have been inoculated against watching news on the telly using the BBC vaccine.
Not in the advertising industry, but the fact that they spend more on trying to lure the 15-24 demographic is probably because they are changing what they buy (their own clothes, what they need to move out on their own, etc.).
Over-55 may also be changing what they’re buying, but it’s mostly things like prescription drugs.
It’s a lot easier to get someone to buy Tide laundry detergent vs. Cascade if they haven’t bought any detergent before.
@Bloke on M4
“Spectacles that are no better than Boots own sell for 5 times the price.” – I get my specs from the pound shop (for a pound), way cheaper even than boots and probs from same factory.
@Tim “I already know someone there and am thus a step ahead of that.”
If you do get the gig and need a tax professional to start every business section by shouting very loudly that “Corporation Tax is paid on PROFITS not SALES”, I’ll happily fill in.
@AndrewC “Tonight, our guest from the Pool of Pendants is…”
Might need some setup to make it an Item in a broadcast, but it’d be a gloriously hilarious concept.. 😉
I note that GBN is also getting stick in faux-conservative rags like the Terriblegraph and Spectator. No doubt the appeasers and wets who infest these titles are horrified at the prospect of actual conservatives showing them up.
Why do you think Andrew Neil quit? He didn’t want to offend his dinner party set by actually broadcasting right of centre opinions.
On the couple of occasions I’ve watched GB News two things have struck me:
1) Terrible broadcast quality. They should have sorted it out by now.
2) No news. It’s all opinions and debates. How about an actual hour of unbiased news from around the world especially picking up on the sort of events that are ignored by the MSM such as anything negative happening in the EU (immigrant crime in Sweden, maillot jeunes in France etc)
@ Bloke on M4
I’d rather watch the Trigonometry interviews on YouTube which have some fascinating guests.
Agree. I have watched GB News a bit – like once or twice – and it’s cack. They don’t have the budget to actually cover news stories properly, so it’s all filler.
Nothing wrong with that if they actually had decent filler, of course, and I think there would be a level of of demand for interviews with non woke people saying non woke things over the course of an hour a la Triggernometry. I love those old Milton Friedman interviuews from the 70s – they went out prime time.
But we shouldn’t forget that people like us – commenting on this little blog – are weirdos. Most people don’t give a shit (they’re stupid not to, because the culture war is interested in them even if etc, but that’s the way it is.
Case in point, I was at the pub last night with my mate Dave. Dave is very high powered indeed – works for a foreign company, and negotiates deals for them worth hundreds of millions all the time – and entirely unwoke. Uses words like ‘poofs’ and ‘trannies’, in public, very loudly. Does. Not. Give. A. Shit. Unfortunately, not only does he not give a shit about what people think about him using the word ‘poof’, he doesn’t give a shit that there are people who care and that they’re infesting the police, the government etc, and that one day he’ll probably be made to care. (Had never heard the word ‘woke’ in this definition, though is very anti-woke obviously.) He won’t watch GB News, if it goes properly right wing and long format and is packed with interesting stuff, and I fear not many people would.
@MC
And nearly all of those are over 55 and advertisers don’t spend much to reach those people
I wonder why, considering the huge amounts of cash the over-55s have.
Less gullible. Not interested in brands, or looking cool?