The star the show, Meghan Markle, has made her own Netflix docuseries. Although it has a special type of Stepford charm, it’s predictably unoriginal.
If home cookery were ever interesting just because, it’d be all over television. The tastes on offer are bland, and it lacks sufficient context.
The development of the UK is something to be marvelled at, but if you watch the BBC, you wouldn’t think so. Most of it passes them by, as if it didn’t really matter after all.
The seminal documentarians who chronicled growing pains of a 70’s and 80’s era of rapid expansion have left our side, to be replaced by podcasters and pundits who know neither time of day nor the hour of the night.
It’s the sort of sentiment expressed to me. It’s a sad one, because we’re supposed to listen. We’re meant to take note of a public broadcaster, even if it’s boring.
The exit of an Archbishop or the reinvention of a set storyline seems more fitting for BBC execs than something worthwhile. The lack of engagement in some realms of politics is its fault.
The sameness felt in the arts is also to its blame. There’s little life or verve in hearing the same voice, or tuning into the same program your father did when he was growing up.
The news culture in America is usually typified as a sort of love-in or hate-filled rant against the state of things. The liberal left tend to agree with each other over their disdain for the right, and the radical right mash together points to get across their reasons why.
It’s unhelpful to group together pundits and projections alike along a spectrum which resembles a mental health chart. It’s down to the need for context and perspective in a nation in which it takes place. There’s a reason why some media is the way it is, and it’s cultural.
Take for example FrankSpeech, a new platform designed by pillow salesman Mike Lindell, who shot to prominence due to his association with Donald Trump and the fallout of the 2020 election. It’s a setup that provides access to channels of alternative content.
The pitch is obvious from the outset; come here for America-first, news-orientated commentary. It’s the sort of thing we’re used to by now, in part due to Trump’s own bombastic style. It’s also novel, because the right don’t tend to report by themselves.
The criticisms from mainstream television, and also some online personalities, has inspired the MAGA crowd to get up on their own feet, to some extent. It’s also the emergence of new technologies that also brings in an onset of realities hard to handle.
An interview with a former Prime Minister is prime time viewing, and with Tom Bradley out of the way, Boris Johnson turned his sights to Camilla Tominey on GB News for another go.
It’s an uphill struggle as the questions aren’t going to be easy. They focus on failures and not obvious successes. It takes an apologetic nature but also combativeness to get a point across.
It’s also a swan song for a stint in Number 10. It puts in perspective any effort or attempt to make a difference, but also provides anecdotes for illustration, and a few laughs.
The advent (or innovation) of GB News is a project to be admired simply because it exists.
There was a time when it seemed no one could stop complaining about BBC News and a dearth of ‘alternative’ news channels that didn’t fit the “mainstream” mould of both the BBC and Sky’s attempts at twenty-four hour news streaming.
These days are not yet behind us, as GB News and also Talk TV lag behind not just in viewers but in significance in the UK news media market.
It’s not just a question of a make-or-break interview, but it’s also a matter of working out how a news channel makes itself significant anymore.
Is anyone really taking note, and is it worth watching at all?
These are questions for a political culture, and not for news journalists, but analysis of both sides of the spectrum amount to dire news for these agencies.
It looks as though they all lag behind in some respects, and GB News isn’t on honeymoon anymore.
According to analysis by Redfield & Wilton Strategies, published at the end of April, it appears as though GB News is doing ok in respects of the demographics of its audience base. They’re Tory voting, mostly beer drinking football fans, who enjoy the banter and gossip on the rolling news channel.
Gone are the days of conservative politics just being about… exactly the same thing. It means they’ve managed to reach the over 55 age range, which you would imagine makes up much of today’s television viewing habits (or at, least those still willing to see it out in long form).
It’s instead of the younger folks, like the University generation of graduates, and those wanting to still see themselves in on the act of following politics, and don’t fit a particular mould.
In my view, this is still a niche considering the complaints about the BBC and Sky, but it’s one that is not easy to fill pockets with, if you get my drift.