Trimming

                                            Monthly reach  Share     Av Daily Minutes

                                            000s     %              %      mm:ss  

November 2024 GB News 3,563  5.49         0.88      1:21

November 2023 GB News 3,535  5.56         0.56      0:54

The BARB viewing figures don't really paint the picture GB News would like to portray - romping ahead of the elite-produced mainstream media. 

So the schedule changes for 2025 should be read as operational bosses Briscoe and Booker trying to get more bang for their bucks, moving in cheaper presenters, moving out under-performing expensive presenters. 

So the new weekday offer of 2 x Jacob Rees-Mogg and 3 x Farage Fan-Boy Professor Matt Goodwin will be much cheaper than 5 x JRM. At Breakfast, Ellie Costello will be cheaper than Isabel Webster.  Ben Leo, on weekend nights, will be cheaper than Mark Dolan. 

Iain's in

BBC DG Tim Davie has swooped for YouTube's Head of Public Policy for UK and Northern Europe, Iain Bundred, as his new Director of Policy and Public Affairs. 

Iain's red - Labour, Liverpool and Wales. Before joining YouTube, Iain worked for PR Consultancy Ogilvy and the Labour Party, including serving as an adviser to James Purnell and then Prime Minister Gordon Brown in Downing Street.

He  went to Warwick School and then studied government at the LSE. Initially he viewed politics as “a fun game to play during [his] spare time”. While at the London School of Economics he edited the student union magazine, The Beaver, and in 2003 became Labour Students’ national secretary. There, he was quoted in The Guardian as saying “I’m no Bush fan – I hate the fucker in fact.”

Then came jobs on comms inside Labour - sent to Scotland during the 2007 election and the 2008 Glasgow East by-election. He joined DWP as a special adviser in November 2008, and then was press spokesman for Brown during the 2010 General Election Campaign. 

He spent most of the recent General Election night tweeting congratulations to old and new chums. 

Figure it out

The BBC News Channel reached 9.4m viewers in the UK across November, compared with 9.58m in October, and 10.85m last year. 

Sky News reached 8.25m, down from 8.58m in October, and up from 8.15m this time last year. 

GB News, currently crowing about beating everyone everywhere, reached 3.56m, compared with 3.50m in October, and 3.53m last November.

Cohen v Munro

BBC Global Director Jonathan Munro has enraged former BBC executive-turned-serial-complainer Danny Cohen with his defence of the work of BBC Arabic news teams in front of MPs earlier this week.  Mr Cohen writes in The Telegraph:  "That BBC leaders are unwilling to admit the corporation’s failings when questioned by our elected representatives is a serious breach of standards."

Here's a bit from Hansard's transcript of Mr Munro's contribution:

"In terms of complaints against Arabic, members of the Committees might be familiar with the complaints process, which is overseen at the top level by an independent group called the ECU, the executive complaints unit. It has dealt with seven, or I think it might be eight now, complaints, all of which have come from one source, against BBC Arabic. None of those complaints has been upheld. While it is important for us always to be open to critique—and we genuinely are; we have had several meetings
with internal and external stakeholders on both sides of the divide on this story, and we will continue to engage with them when helpful—any shorthand summary that says that there have been lots of complaints
upheld is not actually fair on Arabic."

Getting his kicks

Dangerous iconoclast Alan Yentob picked up his CBE from King Charles at Buckingham Palace yesterday.  

Embed from Getty Images

Around the world

We mentioned that the BBC News channel publishes different schedules for different parts of the world, and is not necessarily 'simulcast' globally, as suggested by Global Director Jonathan Munro. 

It's even more nuanced than that. A reader in Australia notes that earlier this year,  the BBC pulled all its channels, including BBC News, from Foxtel, the  country's largest TV provider, with 4.5m subscribers. 

Fans of Amroliwala et al now either have to buy a Fetch Box (c£220+) to add to their broadband, or try via the BBC app or website. (The app just takes you to the website). 

Those who click through are pointed to three time zones, branded Central African Time, East African Time, or GMT. You might have though "Asia Pacific" would make more sense. 

What's the big idea ?

It was not a bravura performance from the BBC's Tim Davie and Jonathan Munro in front of the joint select committees looking at the future of the World Service. 

They came with two 'asks'; please shift the total burden of paying for the World Service back to general taxation, as it used to be. And then, please double the funding, setting us a doubled weekly reach target of around 800m listeners/viewers/unique users per week around the world. 

But, like a pair of conservatory salesmen who've forgotten to bring the glossy brochures, there was no vision of how, where and why the extra spending would deliver.  It would, they assured us, be a conservatory to compete with the Russian and Chinese jobs down the road, if inevitably a little smaller, but there was no idea of what it would actually look like. 

Emily v Jonny (and Tim)

Emily Thornberry MP crept up on the BBC's Jonathan Munro at yesterday's joint select committee hearing on the future of the World Service, asking about the decision to end the half-hour interview programme, HardTalk, which runs on the BBC News Channel and the World Service. 

Mr Munro first indicated 'they' had done it; "The News Channel had some tough decisions to make". Mr Munro is BBC News Global Director, and Director of the BBC World Service. He is also Deputy CEO of BBC News and Current Affairs. He then revealed that people turn away from rolling news channels at busy news periods when recorded programmes appear; this is a very late discovery. The News Channel has been on air since 1997. Let's hope the coming weekend is not 'busy'; there are 32 half hour recorded programmes over 48 hours in the published schedule for BBC News in North America. Emily Thornberry said often, HardTalk was scheduled overnight; Mr Munro said it was simulcast globally (BBC News has different schedules for Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America, Middle East, North America, South Asia). 

Mr Munro turned to 'we' when he said 'we cleared peak-time schedules on BBC2 for interviews'. This referred to an interview with Angela Merkel on the publication of her memoir, Freedom, shown at 7pm.   

 

Rewrite

It's a shame that BBC News online pays tribute to an elegant and precise broadcaster with an infelicitous headline "Mishal Husain bids farewell in final Today episode". 

Today is a news programme, and has 'editions'. It's not a soap with 'episodes'. However, it would be possible to shape a modern drama out of the last 20 minutes, with barely-concealed point-scoring by Today presenters past and present. 

Mishal's departure for Bloomberg is not a disaster for the BBC - but it may make people think the less of Tim "Ten Hag" Davie's ability to pick executives of quality.

P's

Belatedly completing the circle - Paul Oldfield, former Controller Policy has emerged as the new Chief of Staff to BBC DG Tim Davie. Phil Harold formally starts transforming News on Monday, though he's been 'at it' for some weeks now