The channel is looking to recruit 140 “disruptors and innovators” to its ranks to help “reshape television and digital news.”
GB News is a 24-hour news and current affairs broadcaster headed up by former BBC presenter and chairman of the Spectator, Andrew Neil. The broadcaster has launched its official Twitter account. It is reportedly looking to recruit 140 “disruptors” and “innovators” before its planned launch in March this year.
The new channel, with an estimated £60m in financial backing, is set to herald in the biggest change to broadcast news for 30 years since the launch of BSkyB in 1990. Labelling themselves “Britain’s News Channel”, the project has drawn comparisons to Fox News in the United States, but new Chief Executive Angelos Frangopoulos, a former Sky News Australia Executive, has committed the channel to “impartial journalism”.
The channel has hired a number of big names already, including a senior appointment in Rebecca Hutson, Reach PLC’s head of video and former Mail Online director of video who will become head of video for GB News. Lucy O’Brien, former ITN head of field operations, will become head of technology and operations, and former News Corp Australia manager Lucinda Duckett will become director of corporate affairs and editorial advocacy.
Colin Brazier, a seasoned Sky News journalist of 23 years will join to host a daytime current affairs programme. Speaking about his appointment, Brazier said he wanted to “lend an ear to some of Britain’s marginalised and overlooked voices”. Joining Brazier will be The Sun’s executive editor and talkRADIO’s Dan Wootton.
Neil, who will Chair GB News as well as hosting a prime-time current affairs programme on the channel, has said it will look to represent the “vast number of British people who feel underserved and unheard by their media”.
The channel has drawn financial support from a variety of individuals and organisations. Sir Paul Marshall, a prominent hedge fund manager who has donated hundreds of thousands of pounds to the Liberal Democrats in the past, as well as to Vote Leave during the 2016 EU referendum and to Michael Gove’s 2016 Conservative leadership campaign, has become a major shareholder of GB News.
Also investing is Legatum, a Dubai-based private investment firm who also partly fund the Legatum Institute, and the American media group Discovery who invested an initial £20m.
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