What a week for TV broadcasters: it’s been non-stop breaking news about, um, themselves. After BBC Verify’s debacle yesterday, it’s TalkTV that is making headlines today. The television channel, launched to much fanfare in 2022, is moving entirely online from this summer. Staff were informed by email on Tuesday, just a month after the channel’s most famous presenter Piers Morgan announced that his shows would be broadcast solely on YouTube.

The station has struggled with fluctuating viewing figures for some time, and it racked up 2 million viewers in December 2023 – significantly less than BBC News’s 11.4 million and falling just behind its main competitor, GB News, which reached 2.87 million. The channel will continue to have a schedule based on news and opinion but go out via streaming services and on YouTube rather than on traditional TV. It will also continue to air in the TalkRadio slot on DAB. Some comfort at least…

Not that GB News has much to celebrate at the moment either. The channel has seen cumulative losses of £76 million in two and a half years, according to reports published today. The right-wing channel, which is home to a host of presenters including Nigel Farage, Lee Anderson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, has encountered financial difficulties from the off, with PressGazette reporting that there were losses of £31 million in its first year on-air. That grew by 38 per cent to £42.4 million this year, with staff numbers swelling from 175 in May 2022 to 295 in May 2023.

A bad day for broadcasters all round…