I remember, distinctly, the scene, 32 years ago, in the Sky TV press office in Osterley. It was late afternoon and Sky’s five channels were due to go on air at 6pm. We kept reminding ourselves that no-one had ever launched as many TV channels at the same time (this was February 1989 - until Channel 4’s arrival in 1982 the UK only had had only three terrestrial offerings). Sky News would be the first “live” channel on Sky with in-vision presenters. Everyone was nervous. Sky’s HQ - three converted industrial units on what was still a muddy site, underneath the Heathrow flight path - was still being constructed around us, which meant that the inaugural news bulletin, presented by Penny Smith and Alastair Yates, had to be fed through an outside broadcast link in the car park connected to a facility in central London. Anything could have gone wrong. Thankfully, it didn’t.
Like Sky, though, the build-up to GB News launching was coloured by a media narrative similar to that we endured in the latter half of 1988 as we worked towards launch day. Being a then-Rupert Murdoch-owned channel, the tone had been somewhere between cynical and hostile, such was the proprietorial tribalism amongst the UK’s various media corporations. As a cousin of News International - home, then, to The Sun, News Of The World, Today, The Times and Sunday Times - Sky News was envisaged as “The Sun on TV”, somewhere between the tabloid’s cor-blimey popularism and a Thatcherist political bent. We were even known as “Tits at Teatime” in rival newsrooms (when Channel 4’s Drop The Dead Donkey appeared, there were eerie similarities - even the desk phones and vending machine in the fictional GlobeLink newsroom were identical, which suggested some well-placed research).
So, despite the political colour that was part of the chatter before GB News’a launch on Sunday, we should, I suppose, give it a chance. It’s opening night technical hitches (Neil’s monologue looking like it had been lit by candle, Scottish academic Neil Oliver’s microphone not working, and so on), may have given it the air of satirical pisstakes, but these were teething problems that could have happened to anyone. As Hugo Rifkind writes in The Times today, the media should give their new competitor some slack, given the rate of attrition that the journalism profession has experienced in the online age: “Any journalists resenting the expansion of their own industry probably ought to be in a different one,” he commented.
There is a notion, in the old days of printed newspapers, that when you launch a new product - be it a brand new paper or a redesigned one - you do so with a scoop. To some extent, it’s a marketing hook to put you on the map. After a while, everyone - broadsheet or tabloid - soon levels out, covering more or less the same stories in their own particular style. It is, actually, quite a skill to write for a tabloid: trying to cram into 250 words for The Sun what you’d have more than a thousand to make use of in a broadsheet. I can speak from experience, it’s more challenging than you’d think. I’ve also worked with journalists of all creeds, and regardless of their publications’ political orientation, all work to the same objectives. It would, though be horrendously naive to think that all journalism is objective and without nuance. Which is why GB News is, to me at least, a curious experiment. Its debut-edition scoop is to declare a culture war and somewhat cynically tap into the same opposition to political correctness that has Piers Morgan railing about Harry and Meghan’s apparent snowflakery, and ends with footballers being booed for taking the knee at Wembley. There was just a little dog whistle about Neil’s opening: “We are proud to be British. The clue is in the name,” he intoned (and from someone who spends much of his time living on the Côte d'Azur…).
GB News knows full well what it’s doing (and the number of endorsements from people with “defund the BBC” in their social media profiles speaks volumes). Certainly, opening night excitement - even with the Euros on - buoyed the channel’s numbers, with 336,000 viewers tuning in to watch Neil’s opening statement, according to TV industry magazine Broadcast. Sky, by comparison, had just 46,000 viewers, but 8pm on a Sunday night was never going to be a big battleground for eyeballs amongst channels not predisposed for mass viewing. Time will tell whether GB News will genuinely prove the challenger it pretends to be. There’s no doubt that it has attracted a strong calibre of presenters to its line-up, poaching the likes of Simon McCoy from the BBC News channel and former ITN anchor Alastair Stewart to a roster of experienced journalists, including several from Sky News itself. What this says about them, politically, is a matter for debate, and the channel’s editorial content so far hasn’t shown any great surprises, with Nigel Farage and Priti Patel amongst its early interviewees.
It certainly is trying to do things differently. Television news in America, for example, is a largely homogeneous experience: drop into any TV ‘market’ (i.e. a city or large town), and you will see an identical format: a male and female anchoring partnership, a chipper sports presenter and a mildly amusing weather presenter. Yes, Anchorman. Unlike America, however, television news here does vary, thankfully, and GB News takes its place in a landscape where, say, the BBC’s 10 O’Clock News and ITV’s News At Ten do have distinct stylistic differences. Whether they have any editorial differences is a matter of personal opinion. One thing, though, is that I’ve never had any quarrel with the political orientation of any of the mainstream channels’s news output. That, I know, might inflame those who cast the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, ITV’s Robert Peston or Sky’s Beth Rigby as lefty activists - all three regularly get pelted from both sides, leading to the maxim that they must be doing something right if that is the case.
GB News has opted for something else, editorially, and subtly alternative with its look and feel. It’s breakfast show looks like ITV’s GMB but in a studio painted on a limited budget; it’s mid-morning show could be coming from the comfy sofas in the office canteen. And, two full days in, it was still suffering from sound problems - this morning, I had to have the TV volume turned up to 70 just hear anything Colin Brazier, as he sat on the couch wearing an open-necked blue shirt as if we’d caught him during his coffee break, rather than a news bulletin. I’d ask whether this consciously casual approach is what the occasional viewer actually wants, given that rolling news channels are mostly watched by people dipping in to see what’s going on in the world.
GB News believes that it is resetting the way news is presented, arguing - not too discreetly - that existing platforms talk down to viewers. I’m not so sure that’s the case, but again, GB has found its schtick. If you believe that the BBC, ITV and Sky talk down to you, then you’ll find news presented by someone hanging out in the canteen works for you, although no one ever complained about John Craven’s jumpers on Newsround lacking gravitas (though in fairness, his demographic was somewhat different to Kenneth Kendall’s on the Nine O’Clock News).
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Rolling news channels have always found their strength during times of crisis. Only saddos like me have them on constantly in the background while they work during normal times. For the most part, as the description provides, they are repetitive, especially on mundane news days. But it’s when the news hots up, and situations become dynamic, that a news operation is fully tested. Before Sky had even launched, it covered the Lockerbie disaster as part of its trial operation, making the industry sit up and notice as word got around the media village that the channel wasn’t, after all, going to be a televisual version of its print cousin. Live reporting from ‘hot’ news stories - be they wars, disasters or political eruptions - are the mark of a news broadcaster, and its reporting (and production) talent. It’s why the publicity biographies of many news anchors are such colourful affairs, proudly claiming to have been on air during moments of global notoriety. I once had to deal with the fallout of two Sky presenters having a punch-up in the Osterley corridor following an ego spat that began with both claiming to be on air at the moment Nelson Mandela walked free from Robben Island Prison. I swear to this day that someone involved in Anchorman must have heard about it, given that it escalated into a war of attrition that ended with the pair “rolling” down a corridor, not unlike Alan Bates and Oliver Reed in Women In Love (though, thankfully, fully clothed).
GB News will want to avoid any such chicanery, as it seriously dents a channel’s reputation and detracts from the core mission of delivering news as authoritatively as possible. That is when it will truly be worth considering. For now, we can chatter about the gimmicks, the Wokewatch on-air clickbait, and controversialists like Dan Wootton or Michele Dewberry mixing it up for kicks (Sky’s early days had a confrontational debate show featuring Norman Tebbit and Labour MP Austin Mitchell), However, it is when sharp, analytic journalism is required that any news organisation comes into its own. Anyone can read wire copy of what has happened, but it’s a whole different matter being able to objectively explain why it has happened.
In its charter (no doubt, an Ofcom-mandated requirement), there is no mention of GB News’s headline-grabbing intentions. Actually, it’s a pretty standard declaration, pledging to stand for journalistic independence, a fact-based approach but also respect for opinions and freedom of expression. It’s focus is, notably, the UK (the clue is in the name, as Neil stated) and what is “good and bad – it’s about covering what is going on, not just what is going wrong.” That might be a pointed statement about pepping up our lives with feel goodery, but sadly, news doesn’t arbitrate that way. It’ll be interesting how long GB News can remain so differentiated.
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