Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

GB News: a thread so you never have to watch it

bimble said:
What do you mean ? What’s wrong with ‘profit from’ ?
Click to expand...
I don't believe they have a hope in hell of making money, no UK TV news channel has ever made money.

The ITV News Channel failed after about 5 years of having money thrown at it, and despite being run on a very low budget, having the benefit of sharing studios and services that were already in place for the main bulletins on ITV1, and the benefit of the shared resources of ITN as the news provider, their operational costs being provided by fees from ITV, C-4 & C-5, and at the time most commercial radio stations taking IRN services (now provided by Sky).

Sky News loses around £40 million per year, and was kept going by Murdoch for the prestige, when he lost out buying Sky completely, and Comcast took over in 2018, as part of their bid, they guaranteed to continue to fund it for 10 years, what happens to it after 2028 is anyone's guess.

Whilst GBN has an operating budget of only £25m per year, much of that taken up in both terrestrial & satellite transmission costs, carriage fees to the various TV platforms (Freeview, Freesat, Sky & Virgin) plus Digital One for their launch as a national DAB radio station, I still can't see how they can cover those costs from advertising.

They would need to get an average of almost £240 per 30-second spot/12 minutes of ads per hour on average/24 hours a day, to reach £25m a year, that's not going to happen, when much more popular channels, such as DAVE, don't manage that sort of average rate.

There is a plan to recruit 'super supporters' paying £5pm for 'premium content', with an initial target of 100,000, producing £6m per year, but there would be costs in involved in producing and delivering that content, so whatever profit they would make from that. would only cover a small percentage of the annual budget, even if they can recruit that number of suckers.


Raheem said:
Think the idea is that GBN will not be making a profit.
However, it's supposedly raised £60 million from investors. Given that it is clearly not costing anything like that to run, there will probably be pretty healthy profits for some. If they can manage not to die of heart failure on air.
Click to expand...

That £60m isn't going to last long, a sizeable amount would have been spent on setting it up, marketing, and wages prior to launch, with many staff taken on months ago, and the rest will be towards their budgeted running costs of £25m per year from launch, minus whatever small amount of ad revenue they generate in the short-term,

bimble said:
Yep I just looked up where the money’s come from, doesn’t look like anything much but profitseekers to me, some big American media company, a hedge fund manager & some Saudis.
Click to expand...

And, here is where you have to ask about the motivation behind the investors, certainly as far as the hedge fund manager & the Saudis are concerned, it's probably more political than profit.

The mystery is why Discovery put most of the £60m into it, when they are experienced in running profitable TV channels, again it could be a political motivation, or they were just presented with a very fanciful business plan, and thought it was worth a punt, with what to them is little more than petty cash. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall in their offices, when they sat down to watch some of the output from their investment, and seeing what a complete shambles it is.

The fact that they had to turn to America to get the bulk of their investment raises an eyebrow.

It reminds me of Radio Caroline, originally funded by UK investors in the 60's, looking to cash in on advertising, which basically came to an end when UK advertisers were banned from using it, during the 70's it limped on by hiring airtime to a Dutch station, until their ship sunk. Several millions were raised for a new ship in the 80's, but not from the UK, because everyone knew it couldn't make money, but by presenting a fanciful business plan to investors across the pond, that lost the lot.

I have a feeling of déjà vu here.
 
brogdale said:
I'd genuinely pay attention to a poster that was prepared to articulate why they think it's good for working people for this billionaire funded exercise in conservative hegemony and Overton window shifting to exist.
Click to expand...

When mocked, important to focus on the person and the ownership rather than content.

U75: open to every kind of diversity except diversity of opinion - a self-policing mono-culture that belongs in a central Amercan jungle clearing - far better the UK public know only the singularity of metro, middle-class, gatekeeping BBC/ITN/C4/Sky.
 
Loose meat said:
When mocked, important to focus on the person and the ownership rather than content.

U75: open to every kind of diversity except diversity of opinion - a self-policing mono-culture that belongs in a central Amercan jungle clearing - far better the UK public know only the singularity of metro, middle-class, gatekeeping BBC/ITN/C4/Sky.
Click to expand...
That's fine; it's probably best to give posters a chance to demonstrate that they're here for more than shits and giggles trolling.
Declining such an opportunity speaks very clearly.

Over to mods.
 
Loose meat said:
When mocked, important to focus on the person and the ownership rather than content.

U75: open to every kind of diversity except diversity of opinion - a self-policing mono-culture that belongs in a central Amercan jungle clearing - far better the UK public know only the singularity of metro, middle-class, gatekeeping BBC/ITN/C4/Sky.
Click to expand...

When it comes to media outlets, the question of ownership is an important and relevant one. Do you think it's just a coincidence that Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post after it kept making articles critical of Amazon?

If Urban was some kind of mono-culture, then why the fuck do we keep having arguments?
 
cupid_stunt said:
I don't believe they have a hope in hell of making money, no UK TV news channel has ever made money.

The ITV News Channel failed after about 5 years of having money thrown at it, and despite being run on a very low budget, having the benefit of sharing studios and services that were already in place for the main bulletins on ITV1, and the benefit of the shared resources of ITN as the news provider, their operational costs being provided by fees from ITV, C-4 & C-5, and at the time most commercial radio stations taking IRN services (now provided by Sky).

Sky News loses around £40 million per year, and was kept going by Murdoch for the prestige, when he lost out buying Sky completely, and Comcast took over in 2018, as part of their bid, they guaranteed to continue to fund it for 10 years, what happens to it after 2028 is anyone's guess.

Whilst GBN has an operating budget of only £25m per year, much of that taken up in both terrestrial & satellite transmission costs, carriage fees to the various TV platforms (Freeview, Freesat, Sky & Virgin) plus Digital One for their launch as a national DAB radio station, I still can't see how they can cover those costs from advertising.

They would need to get an average of almost £240 per 30-second spot/12 minutes of ads per hour on average/24 hours a day, to reach £25m a year, that's not going to happen, when much more popular channels, such as DAVE, don't manage that sort of average rate.

There is a plan to recruit 'super supporters' paying £5pm for 'premium content', with an initial target of 100,000, producing £6m per year, but there would be costs in involved in producing and delivering that content, so whatever profit they would make from that. would only cover a small percentage of the annual budget, even if they can recruit that number of suckers.




That £60m isn't going to last long, a sizeable amount would have been spent on setting it up, marketing, and wages prior to launch, with many staff taken on months ago, and the rest will be towards their budgeted running costs of £25m per year from launch, minus whatever small amount of ad revenue they generate in the short-term,



And, here is where you have to ask about the motivation behind the investors, certainly as far as the hedge fund manager & the Saudis are concerned, it's probably more political than profit.

The mystery is why Discovery put most of the £60m into it, when they are experienced in running profitable TV channels, again it could be a political motivation, or they were just presented with a very fanciful business plan, and thought it was worth a punt, with what to them is little more than petty cash. I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall in their offices, when they sat down to watch some of the output from their investment, and seeing what a complete shambles it is.

The fact that they had to turn to America to get the bulk of their investment raises an eyebrow.

It reminds me of Radio Caroline, originally funded by UK investors in the 60's, looking to cash in on advertising, which basically came to an end when UK advertisers were banned from using it, during the 70's it limped on by hiring airtime to a Dutch station, until their ship sunk. Several millions were raised for a new ship in the 80's, but not from the UK, because everyone knew it couldn't make money, but by presenting a fanciful business plan to investors across the pond, that lost the lot.

I have a feeling of déjà vu here.
Click to expand...

Businesses don't need to make money these days, twitter's never made a profit
 
brogdale said:
That's fine; it's probably best to give posters a chance to demonstrate that they're here for more than shits and giggles trolling.
Declining such an opportunity speaks very clearly.

Over to mods.
Click to expand...

oh come on that is pathetic. I don’t agree with him but calling for mod intervention because he is what, taking the piss out of people on this thread.
 
xenon said:
oh come on that is pathetic. I don’t agree with him but calling for mod intervention because he is what, taking the piss out of people on this thread.
Click to expand...
If you want the sport of self-described trolls on threads, that's fine; doesn't mean that everyone has to agree with that, eh?
 
Artaxerxes said:
Businesses don't need to make money these days, twitter's never made a profit
Click to expand...

I think they have started too.

CNN reports - Twitter turned its first annual profit in 2018.

CNBC reports - Twitter also reported a profit of $68 million [2020], contrasted with a loss of $8.4 million a year ago [2019].

Investors will continue to invest in businesses normally because of one of two things, expected future profits, or they have a motivation more important to them than profit.
 
I mean if every argument against the U 70 5Paradyne is classed as trolling and the poster invited to fuck off. That is seriously pathetic.
 
Obv. the 'wrong kind' of mocking and laughing. After 40 pages perhaps I should have twigged you have to mock and laugh within the group boundaries, m'lord.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

mojo pixy
Immigration to the UK - do you have concerns?
83 84 85 86 87
Replies
3K
Views
87K
tim
tim
1%er
G4S have access to the Police National Computer (PNC)
Replies
9
Views
416
agricola
agricola
CH1
Calvin Robinson Watch
2 3
Replies
75
Views
4K
tim
tim
_Russ_
Would you believe it?
Replies
8
Views
365
maomao
maomao
steveseagull
Talk TV: a thread so you never have to watch it
2 3
Replies
63
Views
4K
CH1
CH1
Back
Top Bottom