Q. Are the team getting paid from donations / membership sales?
A. No, currently none of the team are getting paid, and none of the team will get paid until the service is launched and running. Any money made during this soft-launch phase is intended solely for use in bootstrapping the business.
Q. Are you building an entire news team from scratch?
A. Yes and no (let us explain). We are proposing, as part of setting up a new television network in the UK, to take over certain television business operations (once launched). Those operations already run a news service.
Q. Can you tell us more about those services?
A. Not at this time, no, sorry. More details will be released when we can.
Q. Why do you want to do factual and entertainment as well as news?
A. In an ideal world, we don’t. But the news alone won’t make money. We’ve business planned it all the ways we can think of, and we cannot make it pay. So, instead we’ve built a business model around the so-called portfolio channel model, whereby we can run the entertainment bit profitably, but instead of sending that profit back to shareholders, we’ll invest it in delivering a news service and other factual content.
Q. Why would you want to invest in a news service if it will make no profit?
A. Because democracy is more important than profit. No one would be happier than us if we could just simply make content and make money. Hell, we could do that, but that doesn’t address the need we have been set up for, which is to address the dire state of factual, current affairs and to make TV work for democracy again.
Q. Are your memberships simply a crowdfunding?
A. Not technically, it is the sale of a product (membership) to allow us to start the business and get on air. We like memberships too, that allow people with a more detailed interest to interact with us in a more community driven way. This allows us to bootstrap the commercial service, while offering members value for their membership during that phase.
Such early adopter sales share some characteristics with crowdfunding, but we are selling a commercial product, not raising funds that then get spent as we want with no product or ‘return’ for those paying.
You can still make a donation, however.
Q. If other services have been set up for £millions, why do you think you can do it for less?
A. The simple answer is, because we don’t need more. We believe we are better off bootstrapping the business, then using pre-sales to finance it, rather than ending up with corporate owners, or shareholders who aren’t interested in letting us reinvest in content. There are plenty of opportunities for folk to invest in content businesses that are all about returning money to investors. We just don’t want to be one of them.
Q. Can you tell us a little bit more about pre-sales? How will that help set up a service?
A. Sure. We can’t give you the deep down details, but we can first of all point you here. The plan is, simply put, raise enough to engage specialists to do the pre-sales of sponsorship. Across the portfolio we believe that will generate enough to bootstrap the channels, then it is up to us to fill it with enough content to increase reach, which ups the price on your ad inventory – in the usual commercial television fashion. Getting enough to make great content might pose a bit of a challenge, but we’ve thought about that too (see next question).
Q. So ads are enough to pay for all of your content?
A. Not initially. Initially we’ll need to start bootstrapping content from pre-sales. That will be painfully difficult, but possible, but our primary efforts (finance-wise) will be to issue either commercial notes (as part of a notes programme) or a bond. We prefer the latter, but what prefer vs. what the market will allow may not be the same. Over time, and across broadcast markets (particularly FAST channels), we do, indeed, believe we’ll make enough revenue to pay for content, but like all businesses, we’ll need to tweek our equity, debt, income source mix to fill in the bumps, in the standard business way.
Q. Why use memberships?
A. Why not? Some people want to get involved. This way lets them. We also have an affiliate option, for those who cannot currently afford or who don’t want to buy a membership, and a donation option.
Q. What is the business model, then?
A. Most news offerings are losing money. They offer their owners influence, and a certain cachet or prestige, and usually are part of a portfolio of channels, allowing broadcasters to amortise costs over more than one cost centre. We believe that is the approach we should take too. We need, and will run a fully standalone news service, but we don’t believe that just such a service will gain the reach, nor the self-supporting nature needed to work for a long-term, sustainable business. Our approach is already proven to work in the industry, so why fix what is not broken?
Q. So you want to create a left-leaning news service?
A. Not at all. That would be as bad as a self-proclaimed right-wing or anti-woke television channel.
We want is a balanced news service, that is not about telling you how to vote, but to give honest, fair news, analysis and factual programming to allow people to make their own mind up, based on the truth. That’s not about left or right, that’s not even about being centrist, that is merely about being honest, and presenting facts, something news, at least in many parts of the industry, has been lacking for a while.
We are firm believers that, on the whole, the viewing public is a lot smarter than they are given credit for, and therefore we should stop dumbing it down, and instead trust that viewers are smart enough to view facts, and make decisions all for themselves.
Isn’t that how we all want to be treated?
Q. But isn’t that something that organisations like ByLine, Tortoise and The London Economic are doing?
A. Yes. But there is a problem. Ofcom’s research into news consumption shows us that companies like GB News have a 6% reach , and the combined output of all of those other online and print only publications has a reach that doesn’t even register. Which means a self-proclaimed ‘anti-woke’ channel is winning the disinformation war.
It’s important to point out, we don’t want to deplatform GB News, we believe that the industry regulator will keep their worst excesses in check, but, rather, we must offer an alternative viewpoint. Plurality in news is a very healthy thing for all, and most especially democracy.
This is where our model comes in. We know, that in order to reach consumers of news in the UK, and to a wider international audience, if you want to make a difference, you have to be in broadcasting. But it is expensive to be there, and why the other groups are not, but if someone doesn’t do it, then disinformation wins – and that’s why we’re doing this project.
We very much hope we will get to work with some of those online and print-only publications later, to give their ground-breaking work a bigger audience.
Q. How can you be sure you’ll get an audience?
A. While it is impossible to guarantee a specific audience, we know that news is the mostly highly consumed programming in the broadcast arena, and one that streaming media services, in Europe in particular, do not address well, and we have a plan to deliver news to a fine granularity across a local delivery platform. It’s part of our ‘secret sauce’, which means we believe we can grow an interest and under-served market segment.
Q. What kind of programming will you offer on the commercial service?
A. We clearly cannot announce our entire programming approach openly before launch, but think nearer to BBC4 with a few drops of BBC3 and a tiny sliver of YouTube (in style).