Yesterday was a bad day for broadcasting champions of the famed ‘silent majority’ as Dan Wootton, Talk TV and GB News all took a kicking.
Wootton left GB News to launch his own platform a day after media regulator Ofcom found that an episode of his show featured “unambiguously misogynistic” content.
He was suspended by the channel in September due to questionable comments by West Yorkshire’s best-known hard-right London mayoral candidate, Laurence Fox, about a female journalist prompting 8,867 complaints to the watchdog after his GB News show.
The host said he had left GB News to launch his own independent platform. He added that it would not be regulated by the “Ofcommunist censors.”
Reports he then went to eat his sandwiches behind the bike sheds alone were unconfirmed at the time of going to press.
The channel said in a statement: “Dan Wootton joined GB News before its launch and was a part of the first on-air line up. Dan is no longer employed by GB News and we thank him for his contribution and wish him well with his future endeavours.”
In other news, GB News’ losses rose by nearly 40% last year.
According to Companies House, which has just published GB News’s full accounts, revenue in 2023 was £6.7m, up from £3.6m in 2022. The company made a loss after tax of £42.4m in 2023, compared to £31m in 2022.
Finally in the world of unrelated-but-sort-of-related truth-seeking TV news, Rupert Murdoch’s Talk TV network is to cease broadcasting as a traditional television channel in the summer and move solely online.
The network launched in 2022 but has struggled to attract viewers to its linear platform.
Scott Taunton, Talk TV’s president of broadcasting, said in a briefing to staff: “Two years ago, we would not have been brave enough to launch a channel without a linear presence.
“But audiences of all ages have moved fast and smartphones are now the primary device where news is consumed. We need to adapt to this as a priority.”
He added: “We are therefore intending that Talk comes off linear television from early summer and our focus will be on streaming.”
It’s almost as if the ‘silent majority’ is actually a gobby minority with the cash to launch a TV channel no one watches for a bit, then fall out and switch to YouTube.
