GB News is ultimately owned by The Discovery Channel and they take a very long view of doing business. They are a huge company with revenues well in excess of $10bn, making them almost twice the size of the BBC. They are also fiercely efficient and very profitable, with gross profits over $2.5bn.
The structure of GB News reminds me of The National, a pro-independence Scottish newspaper. Like GB News, it seems at first glance to be a minnow swimming in a sea of sharks, whereas in reality, it is part of the very large Gannett publishing empire. Both media adventures are opinionated, both are really low-budget, both are probably very long-term projects that have to prove their worth by growing organically.
One must think of the media landscape like the Tennessee Land Rush of 1893. Staking a claim on the land, or in this case, on channels is the easy part. Planting crops was the hard part! It costs a few million to rent transmitter space and pay for play-out facilities and line fees. Making programmes that hold viewers' attention is the hard part! Many seeds must fall on stony ground.
Most new media outlets are poor and amateurish when they start. I was witness to and worked for RTL Television in 1984 when it was a few guys in a converted garage in Luxembourg broadcasting over the border to the German town of Trier. To say the programmes were dire is to grossly understate the blindingly obvious. During the daytime, the DJs from Radio Luxembourg introduced music videos and at night, their most popular programme was a game show called Tutti-Frutti, in which contestants had to answer general knowledge questions. If they got an answer wrong, they had to take off an item of clothing. The highlight of the programme was when a bank clerk and a shop assistant had to dance naked because they didn't know the capital of Ireland.
The station was the brainchild of a media salesman called Helmut Thoma who managed to get Bertelsmann to invest DM20m (just £8m) to get the whole thing off the ground. The station grew exponentially and within five years it got a national license and gained a 10% share of the German TV audience. By the mid-90s it was over 20% in some months and Thoma had managed to have all the top shows like Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Formular-1 and all the top home-grown comedies. It was Europe's largest private TV station.
Those were heady days and I fondly remember extravagant champagne and sushi parties being held at the slightest excuse! A new post-production suit? Party! A new switching centre? Party! A new OB truck? Outdoor party! It seemed that as much as Bertelsmann management disliked Helmut Thoma, he had given them a license to print money and he was going to enjoy his role as a media star as long as the sun was shining!
And I was reminded of my days at Granada TV back in the days of black-n-white TV. Everyone was flying by the seat of their pants - wobbly cardboard sets and Kenny Everett and a young Germaine Greer with a fro and hotpants asking such searching questions as 'Why do men have nipples?'
And yes, lots of parties!
So these are still very early days for GB News. The unclaimed land for UK-based news channels is wide open and the competition is financially weakened and poorly structured. And now the Andrew Neil has had a hissy-fit, we are spared the sight of him dancing naked - and he knows where Dublin is anyway!
