The unbearable darkness of GB News

I’ve been dipping in and out of GB News this week.

I watched the opening hour-and-a-half last Sunday and, like many people, winced at the technical problems, but as someone who wants the channel to succeed I was heartened to read an interesting feature in The Times yesterday that put these initial teething troubles into perspective:

The launch of the BBC’s rolling news channel, then called News 24, in 1997 was, according to one of the producers who was there, “total mayhem. Nothing worked and half the staff had never worked in TV before.”

Likewise Sky News. According to GB News presenter Simon McCoy who worked for the channel when it launched in 1989, “The problems were very similar.”

With that in mind any fair-minded person should give GB News time to find its feet.

That said, I still think the studio set and lighting are terrible. Why so dark? The Daily Mail’s Jan Moir got it spot on when she wrote:

Monarch of the glen Andrew Neil launched the station himself on Sunday evening - apparently from inside a shipping container painted nightclub black.

It might work for a late night chat show (does anyone remember After Dark on Channel 4?) but an entire channel in the height of summer? Insane.

One or two presenters (female) have worked out that in order to stand out in the gloom it pays to wear something extremely bright and colourful. The men however have mostly stuck with dark jackets or suits.

The odd thing is how the set contrasts with the far lighter (and brighter) hue of the channel’s logo.

In the minutes before the launch programme the screen was filled with shifting patterns of red, white and blue but predominantly white.

It looked fresh and professional and I expected the set to reflect that image, but when the channel went live viewers were pitched into a subterranean coal hole from which it has yet to emerge.

Despite what were described online as days of “rehearsals” the whole thing was a bit of a car crash and after 90 minutes, the last 30 of which were presented by an over-excitable Dan Wootton, I couldn’t stand it any longer and switched off.

I’ve revisited the channel several times since and I wish GB News well because the viewer needs diversity of editorial opinion and outlook and that’s what we rarely get on the mainstream news channels.

Whether smokers can expect a fairer, more balanced attitude towards their habit remains to be seen. It would take a brave presenter to stand up for smokers in the current climate, or even declare themselves to be a smoker.

However, while it would make a welcome change from the conformity of existing news channels whose presenters often make no attempt to conceal their disapproval of smoking, that’s not what I’m asking for.

All I want is some balance, for the voice of the confirmed smoker to be heard when smoking and tobacco-related issues are being discussed and for presenters not to be uniformly anti-smoking.

In particular I hope that one or two GB News presenters will be more willing than their mainstream counterparts to challenge the power and influence of the tobacco control industry, but I doubt that’s a hill any of them will be prepared to die on.

Unfortunately the recent explosion of smoking-related stories (Oxfordshire County Council’s plan to go ‘smoke free’ by 2025, increasing age of sale of tobacco to 21, health warnings on individual cigarettes etc) took place in the weeks before the launch of GB News so we don’t know how the channel would have covered them.

We’ll have a better idea when the Government announces its new tobacco control plan in the summer but until then the jury is out.

Sadly I’ve lost count of the number of people (including broadcasters) who claim to be socially liberal or even libertarian but can’t hide their hatred of smoking so don’t hold your breath.

The main thing I hope for is that GB News will give a voice to those who wish to challenge the current public health orthodoxy that demands an increasing number of rules and regulations designed to dictate our lifestyle and take away choice and personal responsibility.

To be clear, if I was a guest on GB News I wouldn’t want or expect presenters to go easy on me. I would expect them to play devil’s advocate and question me accordingly, just like GB News presenter Simon McCoy did on the BBC News channel a few years ago.

I just want public health lobbyists to be challenged too because that rarely happens on mainstream TV or radio. Instead they enjoy a largely uninterrupted platform for their views which are rarely if ever questioned.

There are individual exceptions to this (Nick Ferrari on LBC comes to mind) but they are few and far between. GB News has an opportunity to be different without being shrill or contrary for contrary’s sake.

I shall be watching with interest.

Update: Currently watching Alastair Stewart and Friends (Saturday, 1-3.00pm).

Free of the newsreader’s autocue, the former ITN journalist is a revelation, bringing enormous energy to his new role and clearly enjoying himself. What a pro!

PS. The lighting appears brighter too. Is that a new floor lamp I see on set?!

Update: Now watching Free Speech Nation with Andrew Doyle. No complaints at all about the lighting. Still a bit dark on my iPad but big improvement on TV.

More important, this is a genuinely interesting programme and a huge contrast with what can usually be found on other news channels.

Bravo!