Competitive

From today you can formally apply for jobs at GB News. You couldn't possibly dismiss the business acumen of Andrew Neil, could you ?

I'll have a go. Many US broadcasting innovations have failed to secure a hold in the UK. In the United States, there's a plethora of topical, newsy chat shows, late and late-late, every weeknight. Can't remember when one worked in the UK. Before you point to Simon Dee and Terry Wogan, they were scheduled at 6pm and 7pm respectively. 

Fox News was available on Sky in the UK from 2001 to 2017. Ofcom estimated its daily reach at 60k towards the end. (This week Fox has announced plans for a new streaming service, Fox News International, which will be rolled out in markets outside of the US starting next week.  For the equivalent of £5.34 a month, you can get Fox News Channel and sister station Fox Business Network). In the States, the trends for Fox News don't look great - for the first two weeks of 2021, it has averaged fewer viewers throughout the day than both CNN and MSNBC.

"Free" news channels in English in the UK include Al Jazeera, France 24, CNN, Russia Today, CNBC, NHK World, Bloomberg, TRT World, CGTN, Airirang. They don't seem to have made much headway. George Galloway, Alex Salmond and Sam Delaney gained some notoriety at Russia Today, but their audience figures never rose above 500,000. 

The Sky News show that's perhaps closest to GB News aspiration is The Pledge - yet to break the 125,000 audience required to break into the channel's top 15 shows.

There's a buzz around 'newstalk' radio, thanks to the arrival of Times Radio, so far untroubled by independent scrutiny of its audience figures. It would be hard to define TalkRadio as a runaway success. You can watch it live streaming on YouTube - when I looked this morning, 1,200 were enjoying the experience. 

On the GB jobs site, all but one salary level is undisclosed - they need and Executive Assistant, for £40k. For the rest, it's all 'competitive'.