Was TalkTV's launch day a success?
Piers Morgan interviewed Donald Trump, but what did I make of it?
As some of you may know, for the past couple of months I’ve been wearing a non-podcast work hat, as Chief TV Critic of The Independent. This is something that gives me early access to all the hit TV shows (I know, for example, how Ozark ends) and also affords me the opportunity to pontificate on the entire state of global television. I was, for example, on 5Live’s Breakfast Show at the end of last week, to talk about the decline in streaming figures. Ozark and breakfast radio are the more glamorous end of the job’s spectrum – at the more quotidian end, I spent last night watching the launch of TalkTV so that I could review Piers Morgan’s new interview show.
TalkTV is essentially a souped up version of TalkRadio, the Rupert Murdoch owned talk radio (naturally) station, that essentially competes, here in the UK, with LBC (and 5Live). It is a socially and politically conservative channel, aimed at people who consume news and opinion on a drip, but without much intellectual rigor (however snobby that sounds). I’ve done a little bit of producing work on TalkRadio, back in the day, and it’s a decent operation, and one that knows its strengths. As a spin-off, TalkTV is differentiated from its obvious competitor (and fellow new launch) GB News, by a much clearer sense of operational purpose.
For a while now, the bods at TalkRadio have accepted that video streams and clips of their radio station have a similar effectiveness as a full television studio (this is something that LBC is also very good on, though no TV channel yet). And if you want to launch an expensive new television channel, into a market that isn’t particularly keen on the old tenets of television, it helps if you can basically just requisition most of your content from the radio social media teams. So shows like Julia Hartley Brewer’s breakfast show and The Independent Republic of Mike Graham can make a seamless switch to the TV format, without massive overheads. This is smart particularly because, as GB News have demonstrated, running a full television studio is bloody difficult (putting the expense aside).
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Future Proof to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.