For some time now, there has been talk about a challenger television to rival Sky and the BBC. Now it’s official: GB News will launch early next year – under the chairmanship of Andrew Neil, who will be its flagship presenter. He is leaving the BBC and will join a new team of about a hundred journalists, in what is the most important television launch in Britain for a generation.
GB News is raising between $55 million and $65 million – and the lead investor is Discovery Inc, which is behind Discovery Channel and Science Channel. It’s stumping up about a quarter of the cash. It looks as the fundraising will be oversubscribed, building a pretty big warchest to be spent on journalists.
The premise of GB News is fairly simple: that the current players – BBC, Sky, ITV – are so similar in tone and format that there’s space for a bit more diversity.
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