GB News is a British free-to-air editorial television and radio news channel based in London, England. Announced in September 2020 and launched in June 2021 from studios at Paddington Basin, London, GB News became Britain's first television news start-up since the launch of Sky News in 1989. It was set up with the aim of broadcasting "original news, opinion and debate", with a mix of news coverage and opinion-based content. With a right-wing orientation on political issues, the channel's hosts include Nigel Farage, Eamonn Holmes, Michael Portillo, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Andrew Pierce, and Camilla Tominey.
GB News is jointly owned by hedge fund manager Paul Marshall, who also owns The Spectator and UnHerd and has previously donated to the Conservative Party and the Vote Leave campaign, and Dubai-based investment firm Legatum. Company executives, presenters and editors are also awarded shares. Its CEO is Angelos Frangopoulos, the former CEO of Sky News Australia, and the chairman is Alan McCormick, a partner at Legatum. The journalist and broadcaster Andrew Neil, who left the BBC in 2020 to join the channel, became its first chairman and presented a primetime evening programme. He left in September 2021, two weeks after the official launch, having presented only nine episodes.
GB News ranks as Britain's fourth to sixth most watched news broadcaster. In the second half of 2025, it had higher average viewership but half the weekly reach of Sky News and the BBC News Channel. Polling studies find that GB News is the least trusted major news broadcaster in Britain, and the only one with negative net trust.
The investigation launched into a breach of Ofcom's standards on 12 November 2023 was the subject of 14 investigations into the compliance of Ofcom's impartiality rules, including cases of potential breaches of the rule that, apart from in exceptional circumstances, politicians should not act as newsreaders, reporters or interviewers. As of 17 March 2025, Ofcom has dropped all of its remaining impartiality investigations following a High Court decision, in GB News's favour, that overturned Ofcom's previous findings, which were all ruled unlawful. In light of this decision, Ofcom intended to tighten its rules to prevent politicians from acting as presenters on TV or radio, but dropped the proposals following opposition from GB News and Rupert Murdoch's News UK. GB News has made substantial losses in every year of operation, with losses covered by further funding from its owners totalling £141 million as of 2025.
History
Foundation All Perspectives Ltd was founded as the holding company of GB News in September 2019, and was granted a licence to broadcast by Ofcom in January 2020. GB News was founded by Andrew James Cole and Mark Schneider, two executives associated with the chairman of Liberty Global, John C. Malone. By August 2022, Cole and Schneider had resigned as directors after their holdings in the company were purchased by backers Sir Paul Marshall and Legatum.
On 25 September 2020, it was announced that Andrew Neil, who had presented live political programmes on the BBC for 25 years, would leave the corporation after leading its coverage of the 2020 United States presidential election. He said that he had been in discussions to continue working on the BBC in a new format after the cancellation of his programme The Andrew Neil Show, but that these talks had "not come to fruition" and he had accepted the post of chairman of a new television news channel. On the same day, he was announced as the presenter of a prime-time evening programme on the channel, due to launch early the next year. In a statement, Neil said that the channel would "champion robust, balanced debate and a range of perspectives on the issues that affect everyone in the UK, not just those living in the London area", and GB News was addressing a perceived gap in the market for "the vast number of British people who feel underserved and unheard by their media".
In December 2020, Paul Marshall, a hedge-fund manager, was in talks to invest £10 million into GB News. On 6 January 2021, GB News reached its £60 million fundraising aim, which it said was oversubscribed. The majority of the £60 million came from the Dubai-based investment firm Legatum, Marshall, who said he was investing in a personal capacity, and American multinational Discovery, Inc.; after the merger of Discovery with WarnerMedia (owners of CNN) to form Warner Bros. Discovery, the company's stake in All Perspectives was bought out by the other backers in August 2022 as part of an additional capital injection of £60 million. Marshall and Legatum jointly own the company through All Perspectives Ltd., in which they each own around 40%.
Prior to its launch, GB News said it would recruit 140 staff, including 120 journalists, and would also launch "streaming, video-on-demand and audio services". Since then, CEO Angelos Frangopoulos reported that the channel had employed over 200 journalists.
The recruitment drive began on 25 January 2021. The first presenters and journalists announced in the recruitment drive were Dan Wootton, Colin Brazier, Darren McCaffrey, Tom Harwood, Michelle Dewberry, Inaya Folarin Iman, and Alex Phillips. Following Piers Morgan's departure from Good Morning Britain on 9 March, Neil expressed interest in Morgan joining GB News instead. Neil later said that talks were affected by a disagreement: "he's [Morgan] got his own idea of what he is worth and we [GB News] have a slightly different idea of what he's worth". Later staff announced as joining the channel prior to its launch were Liam Halligan, Andrew Doyle, Rosie Wright, Simon McCoy, Kirsty Gallacher, Alastair Stewart, Neil Oliver, Gloria De Piero, Mercy Muroki, and Isabel Webster.
For the period ending 31 May 2021 All Perspectives Ltd made a loss of £2.7 million.
Launch
GB News commenced broadcasting at 20:00 BST on 13 June 2021. Neil launched the channel by saying "We are proud to be British – the clue is in the name", and after the opening night was said to be "jubilant" that his programme had "out-rated Sky News and BBC News Channel combined". On 20 June, Nigel Farage and Dehenna Davison joined GB News as contributors to host the Sunday morning political discussion programme The Political Correction.
Neil took a break from presenting on the channel on 24 June, less than two weeks after its launch. It was reported by The Guardian in July that John McAndrew, director of news and programmes, formerly of Sky News and Euronews, had stood down from his role. Senior executive producer Gill Penlington, formerly of CNN, ITV and Sky News, also left the channel in early July. On 17 July it was announced that Nigel Farage, already a contributing presenter, would host Farage, a prime-time evening show, from 19 July. Later that month, Mark Dolan joined the channel.
The following month, Talkradio's Patrick Christys joined to present To the Point on weekday mornings alongside Mercy Muroki. The programme replaced Brazier & Muroki.
On 10 August, the channel announced four political programmes to launch within weeks; The Briefing: AM with Tom Harwood, The Briefing: Lunchtime with Gloria De Piero, The Briefing: PM with Darren McCaffrey, and The Briefing: PMQs. The following month, political journalist Isabel Oakeshott joined to host a weekly show.
Neil was expected to have rejoined GB News in early September, but multiple news sources reported that his return had been postponed, with some speculating that this postponement might become indefinite. On 13 September he announced he was stepping down as chairman and would no longer be presenting on the channel. He had presented a total of nine episodes on the channel. Later that month, on the BBC's Question Time, Neil said that he had become a "minority of one" on the channel's board, due to disputes over its approach to journalism. Neil was replaced as a presenter by Colin Brazier in what The Telegraph described as a "fight back by swinging to the right". Neil had been on a contract worth £4 million and included stress among the reasons for departing GB News. In November 2021, Neil called his decision to lead the channel the "single biggest mistake" of his career.
In April 2024, whilst appearing before a House of Lords committee, Neil described his departure to peers, saying 'What I didn't want it [GB News] to become – I could see it was happening, which is why I left almost immediately – was an outlet for bizarre conspiracy theories or anti-vaxxers or, basically, the nutty end of politics', further describing what he saw as a drift towards the style of the US network Fox News, telling peers such a drift would be 'bad for Britain' and describing the channel's production values looking 'as if it were coming from the nuclear bunker of the president of North Korea'.
Post Andrew Neil era
In October, following the launch announcement of rival TalkTV, GB News introduced half-hourly news bulletins and Sunday Express editor Mick Booker joined as editorial director.
In late 2021, it was announced that Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster would present a Monday to Thursday breakfast show, Breakfast with Eamonn and Isabel. Stephen Dixon and Anne Diamond would present this show Friday to Sunday. In January 2022, the channel announced it would play "God Save the Queen" at the start of live programming every day.
Camilla Tominey, Michael Portillo and Andrew Pierce were announced as new presenters in August 2022. Also, after the merger of AT&T's WarnerMedia and Discovery Inc., the shares that Discovery had initially acquired in the channel's early days were put up for sale by new media group Warner Bros. Discovery. Discovery's 25% stake was sold for £8 million, valuing the company at £32 million, almost half of what it was valued at in 2021.
In early September 2022, in a shakeup of the channel's afternoon programming, it was announced that presenters Colin Brazier and Alex Phillips had left the channel. In the days following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, all regular programming was stopped and no advertisements were shown on the channel, with Alastair Stewart, Dan Wootton, Nigel Farage, Mark Longhurst and Patrick Christys presenting most of the coverage of the death of the Queen and Charles III's accession to the throne.
In September 2022, novelist and former Head of Daytime at ITV and Channel 4 Helen Warner was appointed Head of Television at GB News. Warner left the channel four months later, in January 2023.
In October 2022, it was announced that actor and comedian John Cleese would be presenting his own show on GB News in 2023. In 2022 Conservative member of the House of Lords, Helena Morrissey, Baroness Morrissey, became a director of GB News's parent company, All Perspectives.
Following the cancellation of the weekday show To the Point, in November 2022, Bev Turner began hosting her own GB News show Bev Turner Today. She had already been a stand-in presenter on the channel.
Influx of politician-presenters In January 2023, GB News announced that the Conservative MP for North East Somerset and former Brexit Opportunities Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg would join the channel as a presenter. ACOBA were notified of Rees-Mogg's appointment and made clear that his role with the channel is subject to a number of conditions. A fifth Conservative MP, Lee Anderson, was announced to be joining the channel's hosting lineup in March.
Ofcom have found the channel to have breached its standards on more than one occasion regarding misinformation.
Stewart retired as a regular presenter in 2023.
In July 2023, an investigation was launched by the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards regarding Lee Anderson and a promotional video created for his GB News show.