Jonny Hotsausage wrote: ↑Tue 26 Dec, 2023 7:53 pm
But as we saw in the Jungle with Ant & Dec ripping on it, GBN seems to be looked down upon within the industry itself. That in itself tells its own story, IMHO.
It's only looked down on in the same way as I remember BBC Four was, as BBC Three was, as Channel 5 was, as Sky Television was, as Channel 4 was and, although I am not old enough to remember, probably ITV and BBC Two were too. I suspect television in general was looked down on by radio broadcasts when BBC Television launched too. It's just jokes about television because the people writing the jokes know about television as it's the industry they work in.
The joke is basically that [new service] doesn't have many viewers. For the joke to work, the people hearing it need to have heard of the new service. For GB News to be mentioned in a joke on primetime ITV1 is a confirmation that viewers are aware of it. You don't hear jokes about TRT World because viewers are not going to generally be aware of such an obscure channel.
GB News will be pleased about the jokes being made about them. Each one raises awareness of the channel. I suspect the Ant and Dec jokes were part of Nigel Farage's contract. I.e they had to mention GB News a certain number of times and always when Nigel Farage was captioned.
Dan Wootton's profile was recently taken down from the presenters page, so we might deduce from that he probably isn't coming back. Mark Longhurst has also left. 
