GB News chief executive Angelos Frangopoulos has said the broadcaster is “very confident about the future of being self-sufficient financially but we have a lot of work to do”.
GB News reported earlier this month that it lost £42.4m in the year to May 2023, a figure six times greater than revenue. Its biggest shareholders are hedge fund entrepreneur Sir Paul Marshall and Legatum Ventures Ltd, which is connected to the pro-free market think tank and investment group Legatum.
Frangopoulos, who has led GB News since its inception in 2021, told the Lords Communications and Digital Committee on Tuesday as part of its future of news inquiry: “We at the very outset were absolutely clear we are a business and management is under significant pressure to find a way forward for a business.
“Now the way forward for any media business is about audience. You need to be able to connect with, and build, an audience. So we’re doing well on that front.
“The advertising sector though… is actually having many, many challenges so we are looking at different ways of diversifying that income.”
Frangopoulos cited the membership programme launched by GB News in November which asks the most engaged part of its audience to pay for access to exclusive content and access to presenters.
In February GB News reached 9 million people via its website, up 167% year-on-year and 3% compared to January.
On linear TV, GB News reached 3.3 million people in February compared to 9.7 million for BBC News and 7 million for Sky News, according to broadcast data body Barb. News UK’s TalkTV, which has since left traditional TV to go digital-only, was on 2.3 million.
Frangopoulos claimed there were “pockets” of the UK outside London where the GB News audience is now five times greater than that of the BBC or Sky.
“While we have growing audience and our advertising revenue has increased significantly – and it had to because in the early days we didn’t have much – the reality is that we’re looking at all aspects of monetisation,” Frangopoulos said.
“We monetise our product on radio, we monetise our product on linear television in the traditional sense, we have our membership scheme, and of course we are really significantly investing in digital distribution which has got its own monetisation model around it as well so with video or text, that is another area that is important to us.
“So being a multi-media business and being a start-up being less than three years old has allowed us to make sure all our content is actually platform agnostic so we can actually look at where the business model goes. And we’re very confident about the future of being self-sufficient financially but we have a lot of work to do.”
GB News ‘unashamedly covers British news for Britain’
Asked whether GB News is considering following in the footsteps of TalkTV to withdraw from linear TV, Frangopoulos said they were keeping a “watching brief” on where they need to be.
“Our viewpoint is that we have to be where the audiences are,” he said. “Now that’s changing over time. There are still sufficient and significant audiences on traditional broadcast platforms, but of course just like ITV and the BBC and Channel 4, everyone is looking at how those audiences are transitioning off terrestrial broadcast or DAB or DVB terrestrial broadcast or satellite, onto new platforms.
“Because we’re platform agnostic, those platforms that TalkTV are going onto, we’re already there. So it’s really a case of monitoring the business opportunity as we move forward and being where audiences are and that will change over time and everyone is in agreement, I think, that that is changing, at times rapidly.”
Frangopoulos said GB News has built a strong connection to its audience and that its point of difference to BBC News or Sky News is that it “unashamedly cover[s] British news for Britain”.
He praised Sky News for doing an “extraordinary job” covering events in Haiti, Russia or the Baltimore bridge collapse that day which are all “of great interest to the community” but said GB News is “unashamedly British and we cover British news”. As a result the international interest in GB News largely comes from British expats around the world, he added.
Frangopoulos later continued: “We think our international appeal is by being focused on the United Kingdom and the regional markets… I’m a true believer that for media to exist on a global platform you have to be authentic, you have to stand for something. And we stand for Britain and that gives us a unique place in global distribution particularly because we are looking at serving expatriates where we want to tell them the story of what’s happening in Britain at the moment.”
GB News receives 50 Ofcom inquiries in under three years
GB News has received around 50 inquiries from broadcast regulator Ofcom since its launch in June 2021, Frangopoulos revealed.
Several investigations have resulted in GB News being found in breach of the Broadcasting Code most recently for five programmes presented by Conservative MPs breached due impartiality rules, it was announced this month.
Frangopoulos said GB News is working in a “very collaborative environment with Ofcom where we receive their viewpoints and we learn from what they say and we adjust our compliance accordingly”.
But he said he takes issue with Ofcom over the long gap between a programme airing and the findings from an investigation. He said he would prefer it if an investigation could be completed more quickly so any learnings can be applied immediately.
For example he cited the fact a programme featuring the “Don’t Kill Cash” campaign was found to be in breach in December but five other broadcasts are still being investigated in relation to the same campaign, meaning there is not yet any certainty on it.
“Receiving outcomes of investigations nearly 12 months afterwards is just really difficult for us to operate and makes the compliance even harder,” he said, adding that GB News responds to Ofcom inquiries “diligently, professionally, and in time.
“So it’s only fair that we should ask Ofcom to also respond within a reasonable period of time.”
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