New Alternative News Channel "GB News" chaired by Andrew Neil launching - read OP before posting

I'm sure they are true, but they are isolated data points for a single evening last week and as such don't tell anything like the full story.

Also incredibly misleading and disengenuous is the selective use of language to suggest to the casual reader that the GB News show at 6pm attracted numbers comparable to the BBC 6pm news bulletin when in fact all they managed was to get about 2/3rds of the viewers who watched that program on the BBC News channel and not its primary broadcast outlet BBC1 which has at least 25 times more viewers.

If that tweet was an advert it would be the subject of many complaints to Advertising Standards, which would be upheld.

All well and good , but the fundamentals remain absolutely unchanged.

Each and every week since launch they have had less viewers than the week before - That is an absolute incontrovertible fact.

Given that they have this "tent-pole" show with Farage that from time to time gathers a reasonable level of viewers in the explicit context of dedicated "news" channels they have thus far failed utterly to convert those brief periods of increased viewers into a sustained audience across the weeks.

The data shows absolutely zero evidence of growth or even simply stability - They cannot even speak to advertisers and say "we have X viewers each week" because they have not yet established a "baseline" performance as the figures show a decline every week.

Every channel will have peaks and troughs in their viewing patterns - Weather, time of year, Guests announced, the subject being covered etc. will all have an impact up or down. However the least they know is what their operating range is - GB News don't have that yet.

If the audience exists and they provide the desired product for that audience then they will find a level and operate there.

Thus far the evidence would suggest that one or other (or both) of those things aren't there right now for GB News.

The other "established channels" are very much larger yet still are not profitable so the facts are that even if we "imagine what GB News could do in 5 years" and they became the largest news channel in the UK, they almost certainly won't be profitable and as such will still require frequent and substantial cash injections from their financial backers.

As I and many others have said - GB News continued existence is entirely dependent on the willingness of its backers to continue to spend money without return. How long that lasts is entirely up to them.

Those are the facts, nothing more, nothing less.

As has been repeatedly pointed out - the act of crossing the sea and claiming asylum IS NOT ILLEGAL.

Unwanted , undesirable , unacceptable - Those would all be valid and debatable statements regarding what is happening , but ILLEGAL is not one of them.

And even if they are found to not have valid grounds for claiming asylum once processed , they STILL haven't done anything illegal by making the attempt.