The TRIC Awards (Television and Radio Industries Club) was held at London's Grosvenor House last night.
As well as sponsoring the Best Radio Programme category, which ended up going to arch-rival TalkTV (discussed later), GB News had nominations in Best Multichannel News Programme (GB News Breakfast) and Best News Presenter (Eamonn Holmes, Nigel Farage and Stephen Dixon).
Yes, you read that right... Nigel Farage was nominated for Best NEWS Presenter - and the former UKIP leader went on to win the award by a public vote. A tragic sign of the times if you ask me.
Past nominees include Clive Myrie and Victoria Derbyshire. Lumping together widely-respected, credible, impartial journalists and opinionated shock jocks sets a dangerous precedent.
It's hardly surprising with both Farage's and GB News' populist/cultist following that they were able to rally the most troops and scoop the awards.
Other established broadcasters are credible and probably weren't pushing as hard for votes. GB News is hungry for the clout because that's all it can get.
Accepting the award, Farage attacked the wider industry and claimed a panel of judges from within wouldn't have shortlisted GB News. To be fair, he's not wrong as that would've meant a genuine quality battle rather than a "who can shout the loudest" contest.
Hitting out at BARB (Broadcasters' Audience Research Board) - which is jointly-owned by the BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5, the IPA, ITV, Sky and UKTV - Farage said "you should be frightened, because you will lose your jobs" accusing the mainstream broadcasters of "marking (their) own homework".
This curious tirade against the body responsible for measuring TV audiences is comparable to fellow right-winger Kanye West’s outburst at the 2009 VMAs when Beyoncé lost out to Taylor Swift - only, this time, the victor was the one raging.
Any suggestion that BARB is rigged in favour of its shareholders is laughable and typical of Trumpesque/Johnsonesque "cry witch-hunt" politics.
For a start, if Channel 4 was involved in manipulating the figures, Steph's Packed Lunch would never have recorded zero viewers - or, if ITV was, the Britain's Got Talent Final wouldn't have lost 13.2 million viewers since 2009.
GBN has no involvement in BARB and doesn't come close to the likes of the BBC and Sky when current affairs coverage is in high demand. Bitter much?
Despite this extraordinary claim by the broadcaster's flagship presenter, we'll still see the tweets - inflicted upon us by Elon Musk's purported haven of free speech - from GBN presenters and execs unable to contain their excitement about a BARB triumph against rolling news channels on a slow news evening.
A) you're primarily an opinion channel, not rolling news, and B) I thought the data was rigged? Or is that only when it's not in your favour?
A quick word on "Best Radio Programme"
The nominees in this category were:
- Capital Breakfast with Roman Kemp (Capital)
- James O’Brien (LBC)
- Kate Garraway (Smooth)
- The Julia Hartley-Brewer Breakfast Show (TalkRadio)
Julia Hartley-Brewer took home the gong - again, voted for by the public - but it was also nominated for Best Multichannel News Programme as a TV show. Am I being pedantic or does that seem unfair?
Which is it primarily? A radio show because it's in a radio studio (which is obviously not how ordinary people would define radio), or because it has a bigger radio audience, or because sound is more important than visuals? Or a TV show because that medium enables it to be seen as well as heard?
Fascinating dilemma, eh?!
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