The rightwing news channel TalkTV, launched in 2022 by Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, is to stop broadcasting on television after struggling to match its main rival GB News for ratings.TalkTV will switch to online platforms only from this summer, an email to staff announced on Tuesday. Last month, its best-known presenter, Piers Morgan, said he would be leaving his daily evening show.The channel got off to disappointing start with “zero viewers” during primetime broadcasts, meaning its audience was too small to register on the official rating agency, Barb.In December 2023, it reached 2 million viewers, significantly behind its rival GB News, on 2.87 million, and little challenge to the dominance of Sky News, on 8.5 million, and the market leader, BBC News, at 11.4 million for the month.The move will be seen as boost to GB News, despite its rising financial losses. On Tuesday, GB News said its pre-tax loss had gone from £30.7m in the year to the end of May 2022, to £42.4m a year later. Last year, GB News received £41m from its parent company, taking the total it owes to £83.8m.TalkTV and GB News have faced investigations by the media regulator Ofcom over complaints about impartiality breaches by presenters. In July last year, Ofcom said it was looking into comments made when the Scottish Alba party leader, Alex Salmond, presented a discussion programme in which he said the Scottish National party was “hold[ing] back the course of independence”.Scott Taunton, TalkTV’s president of broadcasting, in an email to staff presented the move as a reflection of audience preferences for online viewing.It said: “Two years ago, we would not have been brave enough to launch a channel without a linear presence, but audiences of all ages have moved fast and smartphones are now the primary device where news is consumed. We need to adapt to this as a priority.“We are therefore intending that Talk comes off linear television from early summer and our focus will be on streaming.”The briefing to staff added: “Talk will continue broadcasting as a livestreaming news and opinion channel, distributing through streaming platforms to include YouTube, Amazon Fire, Samsung, LG and others.“A large proportion of our live viewing is already through streaming on televisions and we intend to continue to grow this.“Clips will continue to be shared through social media. There is no doubt over Talk’s future as an audio and video channel, it just won’t be distributed on linear. Radio on DAB continues unchanged too.”Morgan said he was leaving to focus on the Piers Morgan Uncensored YouTube channel, saying that daily, fixed TV schedules had been “an increasingly unnecessary straitjacket”.TalkTV has 812,000 YouTube subscribers.The launch schedule for its first day on 25 April 2022 started with The News Desk with the Sun’s former political editor Tom Newton Dunn, followed by Morgan’s Uncensored show.
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