The recently launched GB News Channel is being buffeted by an advertiser boycott. Just days after its launch last Sunday in the UK, several major advertisers have voiced their concern about their brands being linked with the news channel and cancelled their ads.
Among the advertisers pulling their spots is homewares megastore Ikea and Swedish cider-maker Kopparberg.
Having to deal with an advertiser boycott is all too familiar for the channel’s Australian CEO Angelos Frangopoulos.
Back in 2018 Frangopoulos was the then soon-to-depart CEO of Sky News Australia and he was dealing with an advertiser boycott supported by lobby group Sleeping Giants.
Even before the new channel launched, Frangopoulos spoke to Business Insider about the forces that might rally against it:
Attempts to silence the channel are part of what he calls the growing “cancel culture” on social media, which he believes ignores the voices of the majority of people in Britain.
“There’s a real cancel culture that has developed,” he told Insider.
“And we have found ourselves as a target of that which really quite frankly has underscored the need for a service like GB News.”
He went on to explain that it is wrong to link the news service to either Fox News or Sky News Australia:
“This is a very different environment. And quite frankly, I believe a Fox News and a Sky News Australia model would not work here in the same way. GB News will be GB News. It will be uniquely made for the United Kingdom.”
The channel has attracted support from a number of commentators who have spoken out about the spread of cancel culture. After hearing reading a statement that Ikea was backing off, columnist and broadcaster Piers Morgan wrote on social media: “Oh shut up, you pathetic virtue-signalling twerps. I’m now boycotting IKEA.”
Among the people lobbying against GB News in the British lobby group Stop Funding Hate.
The BBC reported in an opening monologue to viewers on Sunday night, the channels’ key signing Andrew Neil said GB News would aim to “puncture the pomposity of our elites in politics, business, media and academia and expose their growing promotion of cancel culture for the threat to free speech and democracy that it is”.
Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator which Neil is also chairman of, told BBC News that Kopparberg’s boycott could lead to a consumer backlash.
“Cancel culture is not popular. If Kopparberg is clever enough to sell cider to the English (who have the best apples on earth) then it should be clever enough to realise its mistake. We should expect a clarification soon.”
Press Gazette reported advertising sales for the news channel are being handled by Sky Media and brands have said they were unaware their campaigns would appear on GB News in advance.
See also: GB News Launch