just through the window here, there are many people journalists, producers working on the output as it goes on. and we re going to consider what s definitely been a tumultuous 12 months. i m joined by angelos frangopoulos, the ceo of gb news. thanks for being with us. thank you very much for having me, ros, and welcome to gb news. you re still going? we are going strong. in fact, it s been a tumultuous start, but i have to say it s been an exhilarating journey for the entire team and it has been something that really has been very typical of a start up, i think, particularly in the early days. tumultuous. there were probably other words being used as well. were there moments in that first week, that first month, where you thought, maybe this isn t going to hang together ? not at all, not at all. very typical of a start up that some things go right, some things go wrong, some people come through, some people don t. and the reality is that you almost need to go through some of tha
by 0fcom and seeking to play by their rules. do you regret the fact that you are being regulated, in terms of the balance of your programming? not at all, not at all. we have embraced it from day one and that is an important part of our positioning in the landscape. so we could have launched gb news over the top on a connected tv or on youtube or on our own website. we chose to operate in an 0fcom regulated environment because, quite frankly, it gives you kudos. it means that you actually have got credibility in the marketplace. and it also means that we play on the level playing field with the bbc, sky and others. so you re happy to be regulated by 0fcom, you haven t come a cropper with the 0fcom regulators, but let s talk away from the 0fcom rules and simply about the nature of balanced programming. a little while ago, you were referencing the fact you want to hear all perspectives.
in fact, i think the company which is the parent company is called all perspectives. but for example, i was watching dan wootton a few days ago. there was a lengthy segment with nigel farage where dan wootton agreed with everything that nigel farage said on immigration. he then interviewed jim davidson, where he agreed with almost everything jim davidson said about cancel culture. now, the viewers might like that, but it s not a balanced discussion, it s not an impartial discussion, because the presenter is agreeing with the guests a lot of the time. but that is not a news bulletin, as such. and i think you need to understand that, actually, there is a breadth of voices across the schedule on the channel and that is an important part of any rolling news channel. the impartiality exists in its purest form within the news bulletins, which actually are straight down the middle, impartial, traditional news bulletins. yeah. but the reality is that you do have a variety of voices through the
into polemic or pure opinion without the necessary facts attached. i mean, the suggestion that there s some sort of agenda is absolutely wrong. so, that is fact. now, let s talk about where you ve got to because, as you rightly say, the launch is a while back now, 12 months. from the start, you were always clear that tv ratings were not the only metric of success. you were very open about your digital ambitions. two things i d like to understand there. 0ne, what s your definition of success in the digital arena? and then how do you make money off it? those are good questions! so the fundamentals of gb news as a business is that it is a digital business at its core that has a tv station and a radio station attached to it, so it s kind of the opposite to the traditional establishment media landscape. from a digital sense, we have products that. we tell stories in different ways to suit different demographics.
what did you want this network to be when you sat down with him, when you sat down with others? what was the plan? the plan has never changed. and in fact, i think that when andrew made that comment, it was more probably around the fact that he found the start up environment difficult rather than there was. there was no shift or no leap to any direction left, right, up, down, whatever. what we are delivering today is exactly what we promised right from the start broad, opinion based programming where we talk about things that often are not talked about in the broader media landscape. but if i look at the programming that you re putting out and the subjects you re discussing, from the royal family to immigration to cancel culture, this is hardly the only place i can go to get those things. yeah, i think that they re probably the only place you can get those things in a television environment, certainly. you have a breadth of subject matter and viewpoints that exist in print