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TalkTV to be taken off air after two years to focus on streaming – as GB News reports heavy losses

The move from TalkTV, owned by Rupert Murdoch, comes just a few weeks after presenter Piers Morgan announced his departure to focus on his YouTube channel.

 

OK, so I’d be lying if I said the two related stories in this piece from Sky News didn’t make my heart skip a beat. TalkTV following Piers to YouTube! GB News racking up £76 million in losses! It’s enough to make you think there is a God and she’s most definitely not an anti-woke, swivelled-eyed loon.

However… neither of these outlets is going away any time soon. TalkTV’s retreat to digital is a failure, but there are no plans to shutter it. And even though the GB News crew will trumpet the fact that they are the last right-wing TV channel, all their growth is online.

Why does it matter? I suppose I’d just like the UK media to be a bit kinder, a bit more objective, a bit less funded by billionaires that generally have no stake in making the country a better place to live because they live somewhere else. Still, GB News backers Legatum £76 million in the red and Rupert’s team relegated to YouTube is a start.


 

Media Briefs: Democratising AI for publishers

For the 95% of publishers who haven’t yet adopted AI, identifying a use case they can start with is usually the biggest roadblock. But the tools also need to be available to be able to support unique revenue streams.

In the latest of our Media Briefs series of short, sharp sponsored episodes – just 10 to 15 minutes – I spoke with Maanas Mediratta, CEO at Bridged Media. We talked about the 95% of publishers who haven’t yet adopted AI but want to and how Bridged’s work to make AI tools more accessible to publishers will help the whole publishing ecosystem.


 

LinkedIn doubles down on news as social rivals retreat

LinkedIn is investing more in journalism and news amid a broader pullback by tech rivals from the industry, but it won’t make up for traffic losses.

Everyone’s favourite professional social network is working with 400 publishers globally to get more journalism and news onto the platform, according to the company’s editor-in-chief and vice president Dan Roth. However, Axios has looked at the numbers and although traffic referrals to news publishers have increased slightly from LinkedIn over the past three years, LinkedIn alone won’t make up for the dramatic reduction in traffic referrals on other channels.


 

Reach results 2023: Revenue falls 5% as print outperforms digital

Revenues at Reach, the UK’s biggest commercial news publisher, were down by 5% to £568.6m in 2023 according to its new full-year results.

In news that could have been worse, Reach has reported a revenue decline of 5% for 2023. Falling revenues were blamed on falling referral traffic from Facebook and Google and lower yields from programmatic advertising. Print revenues were more resilient, down just 2%, with print still delivering 75% of Reach’s total revenues. Wonder if it’s something to do with actually being able to read the stories on the printed pages?


More from Media Voices

 

The Economist’s Nada Arnot on why publishers should run more brand campaigns

Nada Arnot tells us about how the news-focused magazine is seeking to attract younger readers, and future plans for marketing The Economist.

 

By pretending to be underdogs, national news organisations do smaller publishers dirty

Big Tech companies like Google wield vast amounts of power in their respective fields. But by casting themselves as underdogs against monolithic but amorphous ‘Big Tech’, news organisations are seemingly exculpated from any fault of their own.

 

Publisher Podcast and Newsletter Summit

We’re working on the agenda for our Podcast and Newsletter Summit in June. If you’ve got a case study or something you’d really like us to cover, tell us using this form.