![]() Spotlight Andrew Neil (centre) with fellow presenters at the launch of GB News in June 2021. For now, Neil remained at his home near Cannes on the French Riviera rehearsing without a studio was a waste of time, he told friends. The evening team was headed by the former Apprentice contestant Michelle Dewberry, former Sun showbiz editor Dan Wootton and Andrew Neil, who was both the channel’s chairman and star signing. The afternoon team featured former Labour MP Gloria De Piero, Liam Halligan ( Channel 4 News), Simon McCoy (BBC News) and former Brexit Party MEP Alex Phillips. A morning team included Kirsty Gallacher (formerly of Sky Sports) and Colin Brazier (Sky News). The new hires were separated into groups. What the hell have we done, he thought.įor now, the plan was to get the teams in the best shape they could. One senior presenter – poached from an establishment broadcaster – remembers the worried glances that went between the more experienced staff. That speech at the Hilton was the first sign, several people in attendance told me, that the project was not all they had been promised. This article draws on hours of conversations about the highs and lows of a tumultuous year, as the channel nears its first birthday. ![]() Over the past four months, I have spoken to dozens of GB News employees, past and present, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, either due to settlement non-disclosure agreements or concerns that it would impact their current employment. “We’re just going to disrupt! We’re going to take pictures, take sport – take everything!” “You’re not listening,” they were told by Frangopoulos. He didn’t share it with the crowd, but Frangopoulos already had a launch date in mind: 31 May – only three weeks’ time. For the next two weeks they would be rehearsing in the hotel. At least, that is, once they’d built the studio to TikTok and DAB from.Īt the Hilton, staff were a five-minute walk from their new premises, on which the builders had descended just a month before. The revolution would be televised, but it would also be on TikTok and DAB radio. GB News was not a broadcaster, Frangopoulos told staff: it was a tech company, a disruptor. And it would do this in every format possible. It would debate subjects – vaccines, lockdowns, knee-taking for all reasons other than shoelaces and marriage proposals – that others treated as the new status quo. GB News would be for viewers outside the London bubble it would celebrate Brexit, not mourn it. They would be reaching an audience that TV had left behind, or just plain talked down to. This 80-strong crowd were about to disrupt the staid world of TV news – a relatively niche industry, and one that had changed little since Sky News launched over three decades ago. In the Great Western ballroom of the Hilton hotel in Paddington, London, the chief executive of GB News – who is 56, trim and boasts the closely razored head of the power-bald – ran through what was by now a familiar sales pitch. When Angelos Frangopoulos addressed his newly assembled staff in early May last year, the atmosphere was jubilant, giddy even: that curious cocktail of carefully curated rebellion that only a start-up can provide.
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