Dan Wootton leaves News UK for GB News and Mail Online
- Published
Dan Wootton is leaving The Sun to join the new GB News Channel which is due to launch in 2021
Dan Wootton, the Sun journalist who broke the story of "Megxit", is leaving to present a daily show on GB News and write for Mail Online.
Wootton, 37, is currently executive editor and columnist at The Sun. He also hosts The Dan Wootton Show on TalkRadio. Both are owned by Rupert Murdoch's News UK.
The New Zealander becomes the first high-profile on-air signing for GB News, the network chaired by Andrew Neil.
It could re-shape the landscape of British media when it launches later this year.
Wootton will host a daily show, five days a week, on GB News.
'Impartial journalism'
A former editor of the Bizarre showbiz column, Wootton has a pedigree in breaking big stories, including the decision by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to move abroad, which came to be known as "Megxit".
His hire by GB News is a strong indication of the editorial direction in which that channel will go. Wootton has written trenchant columns taking aim at "woke" culture, and his monologues for TalkRadio have generated significant hits on social media.
GB News has been talked up as Britain's answer to Fox News, but the validity of that comparison is limited. It is not the first channel to be set up in Britain with a strong worldview - RT, formerly known as Russia Today, has done that for years. But GB News is the first to be set up with an explicit political leaning.
Chief Executive Angelos Frangopoulos said this week "we are committed to impartial journalism", and the channel will be regulated by Ofcom. However, it is likely to borrow from the commercially successful model of speech radio network LBC, which is closer to 'balanced' in its overall content than studiously 'impartial' throughout.
GB News, which is on a production hiring spree, has attracted very considerable investment. Its backers include Discovery, the US giant, and Paul Marshall, the former hedge funder with heterodox political views (he once stood for the SDP-Liberal Alliance, and donated to the Liberal Democrats; but later gave money to the Leave campaign in the EU referendum).
Andrew Neil left the BBC in 2020 and became chairman of the television news channel GB News
GB News is unlikely to be profitable in the near-term, but could shake up the culture of British broadcasting. In Neil, it has both a formidable broadcaster and a media executive with experience of another network launch years ago: he was the founding chairman of Sky TV in 1988.
Wootton will write two columns a week for Mail Online - and occasionally roam more broadly. Like Piers Morgan, he'll write for the website alongside his TV work. (Morgan also writes a column for The Mail on Sunday).
As with any such move, his poaching by GB News is partly a verdict on the place he is leaving.
News UK's own plans to launch a video service, for which former CBS News and Fox News executive David Rhodes was brought in, have been slower to evolve than GB News.
Launching a new network is very hard, and TV is expensive. In the past year, News UK have successfully launched Times Radio, while also investing heavily in the expansion of Virgin Radio.
Wootton's departure creates a significant vacancy at TalkRadio, another part of the sprawling News UK empire led by Rebekah Brooks.
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