Success or indeed failure, however, will ultimately be determined by its investors and, more importantly the advertisers it badly needs.
When a brand decides to pull its advertising campaign from a news channel for whatever reason, the last thing the channel should do is to challenge it to a national TV debate to discuss the reasons why.
Unfortunately, nobody in the commercial department of GB News told Andrew Neil this when he threw down the gauntlet to several well-known brands after they pulled their ads from the fledgling news channel he co-founded last week.
Some of the brands included the likes of Nivea, Kopparberg, Ikea and Grolsch. There may have been others too but what appears to unite them is a certain hesitancy about advertising on a new and yet-untested TV channel that will have a distinct right-wing bent to much its output.
Neil, who serves as chairman, founder and a nightly programme host, should have known better. In the cut-throat world of TV advertising, you need advertisers and their media agencies on your side. To the best of my knowledge, poking them very publicly with a stick does not get you on their media plans. But let’s chalk this down to a mild outbreak of folie de grandeur.
Advertisers are not the only ones who can be forgiven for feeling a tad reticent, if not downright queasy about the new channel. Some critics have claimed GB News is an attempt to create a British version of the right-wing Fox News, which for most of the last five years has unashamedly provided a platform for former President Donald Trump and his cronies to spew “alternative facts” and foment a toxic political culture that ultimately led to a violent attack on United States Capitol in January.
In a dig at rival news organisations, particularly the BBC, Neil has said the new channel would not be “another echo chamber for the metropolitan mindset that already dominates so much of the media”. He added that he wanted to “empower those who feel their stories, their opinions, their concerns have been ignored or diminished. We are proud to be British. The clue is in the name.”
That pretty much sums up what Roger Ailes said about Fox News when Rupert Murdoch brought him in to set up the channel back in 1996. Tired of the so-called liberal and coastal elites running the US media networks, the now-disgraced Ailes vowed that Fox would become the voice of blue collar and conservative America. And in doing so it achieved unprecedented political power and leverage while at the same time becoming one of the most profitable outposts of the Murdoch empire.
But Neil and other senior colleagues in GB News have played down any similarities with Fox and they have insisted the station is committed to impartial journalism and it will obey Ofcom’s broadcasting regulations on impartiality. Even so, we can expect plenty of scrutiny and complaints as it cranks up over the coming months.
While it may be more Fox & Hound than Fox & Friends, launching a news channel with a right wing perspective in post-Brexit Britain is ambitious. A seasoned Fleet Street veteran and a dyed-in-the-wool Brexiteer, Neil knows that there is a new found sense of British – but mainly English – nationalism that has risen to the surface since the UK has left the EU. If only a fraction of the 17.4m people who voted to leave the EU tune into GB News every day, he could be on to something. For some of these hitherto disenfranchised voices, Neil is the embodiment of this new found jingoistic spirit. For others, he is over-opinionated and flatulent dinosaur who is having one last angry roar at the moon before Darwin’s removal van takes him away.
But it’s not a totally daft idea either and its worth pointing out that Murdoch also had plans to launch a similar news channel in the UK up until quite recently. Rather than have two new right wing news channels go head-to-head – and recognising GB’s headstart – he decided to scale back and explore other options, most likely on one of several streaming platforms. Some industry figures say he may be waiting in the wings to pick over the corpse of GB News if it fails.
Success or indeed failure, however, will ultimately be determined by its investors and, more importantly the advertisers it badly needs. Given Neil’s unprecedented outburst last week, many would say that GB News could have got off to a much better start.
The Institute of Advertising Practitioners in Ireland (IAPI) has appointed Katherine Ryan as its new programme director.
In her new role, Ryan, who joined IAPI in 2017, will be responsible for heading up a number of IAPI’s key initiatives, including the Effie Awards Ireland which are currently underway in addition to the Cannes Young Lions competition as well as the various other member-focused events and initiatives.
VHI Healthcare has launched the latest instalment of its brand story-telling campaign that features real customer stories. Created by Publicis Dublin, produced by Piranha Bar and with media by Spark Foundry, the latest campaign tells the story of baby Alex who, after missing certain developmental milestones, was rapidly hooked up with a paediatric consultant through the VHI. The campaign will run across TV, radio, VOD, digital and audio.
