The funding appeal by the UK’s new independent TV news channel has been over-subscribed by almost 50%. The channel, backed by Discovery Inc, has attracted funding ‘offers’ of almost £90m and is now scaling back the bids to £60m. It is believed that, at this level, GB News has sufficient funding for some 3-5 years, depending on advertising and sponsorship revenue.
GB News is fronted by former BBC political anchor and newspaper editor Andrew Neil. The CEO is Angelos Frangopoulos, former head of Sky News Australia, and the Director of News Programming is John McAndrew, a former executive of Sky News, ITN and NBC.
Would-be investors have been encouraged by the prospects for GB News, based on its estimated £20m cost base – less than 25% of Sky News which employs 500 people. The 30-year-old, highly-rated, 24-hour Sky News is believed to be lossmaking to the tune of some £15-20m annually – the same as the cost base of GB News.
To many observers, that differential helps to create the opportunity for low-cost, limited-hours, UK-only channels. Their confidence has not been dented by claims from the CEO of ITV, the country’s largest free-to-air commercial broadcaster, that the “Foxification” of news would not be successful in a UK market dominated by the BBC.
GB News (and the UK channel planned by News Corp) are expected to use streaming platforms as a way of boosting audiences (and hence advertising revenue) for their programming. But Sky News (which has started promoting many of its programmes as podcasts) is also believed to be exploring ways of building its non-broadcast audience. Sky News has a four-week viewing reach of about 10m Brits, some 30% less than the BBC News Channel.
The identity of would-be investors in GB News (other than Discovery) is not known. But it is believed that Sky News’ speculation that one of the country’s wealthiest families, the Reubens, is among them is erroneous. GB News is believed to be keen not to have a single dominant shareholder, with the possible exception of Discovery itself.
GB News is currently recruiting journalists and production staff but is not disclosing its start date other than “March 2021”. The channel is in a race with what may (or may not) be a similar launch from News Corp, publisher of two major daily newspapers and a radio network, including TalkSport, Virgin Radio, and the recently-launched Times Radio.
It would not be a surprise if Sky News recruited a big-name, outspoken commentator in a bid to neutralise the competition from the new channels, which are expected to be more strident and opinionated than the UK’s existing TV news.
