[JMT1985]

GB News website is dreadful - for a company which wants to be taken seriously, it seems they have let someone who has no idea of how to design a news website to design their news website.

At least TalkTV don't even bother with a proper news website for their own channel, go to TalkTV website and it it just information about their programmes.

When you compare GB News website presentation to everything else, you wonder how much budget is spent on their website, it must be a pittance.

[Adsales]

They're now actually acting exactly like the Express, down to the random capitalising of words in the headlines!

Met Office announces a major Sudden Stratospheric Warming event is now underway which will DISPLACE the Polar Vortex - UK facing "COPIOUS amounts of snow"

Not only did they take the copious amounts of snow quote from infamous Exacta Weather (same as the Express and never right) but they have actually misrepresented it. It says "we could be looking at a prolonged cold period of around two weeks during March with some potentially copious amounts of snow.”

Make it worse, this new "style" isn't limited to weather clickbait. 

Nicola Bulley diver ENDS SEARCH...

North Korea... BIGGEST EVER military parade

PMQs: Tory MPs LAUGH as Sir Keir Starmer claims Labour can be trusted on Nato

Donald Trump to RETURN to Facebook and Instagram.

I'm not sure if going after the ever-dwindling Express readership ties in with becoming the biggest news channel by 2028 but who knows. Maybe the apparent huge silenced minority is actually much bigger than anyone thinks 

Looking at facts rather than assumptions..sorry FACTS

Express is Number #10 uk news website,  #55 most visited overall in UK. For comparison The Sun is only #8

www.similarweb.com 

According to trade publication Press Gazette its had significant growth over last 2 years. 

So it's pretty obvious given the brand demographics that writing and headline style would give hints for GB News to copy.

Everyone changes style and story selection to win online. For example BBC Newsbeats #2  top story as I write:"Kardashian's vaginal health gummies upset experts"

Let me rephrase that to make you happy 

[...[given the ever-dwindling Express readership within the Express' (and GBN's) target audience (right off centre) [...]

The largest group of users of the Express website is under 44 and spends more time reading the BBC, Guardian and even Daily Mirror websites than they spent on express.co.uk.
The largest share of traffic to the Express website comes from social media posts which criticise the content of linked articles and where the comments have negative views of the content by a ratio of 70/30.

Of course none of that is really relevant to GBN and the discussion here. The simple reason for the change in "style" on the GBN website is the hiring of the former Express' Editorial Director (he was also responsible for the relaunch of the Daily Star and OK! websites) and making him CDO.

Whether the change of "style" he has introduced will  actually increase GBN's audience or do anything for its reputation is a very different question. It's fair to argue that the brand is known for what it is known by now. Applying an Express "style" is unlikely to appeal to those who have made up their mind about GBN, in fact it further reinforces that it is "for the same people who read the Express" and also undermines any attempt of appearing trustworthy, which is why I said what I said earlier 

[Stockland Hillman]

I generally agree, Adsales.

The reality for all media business is audience = impacts = revenue . Do media owners particularly care if its a love or hate click? Not one bit

Not sure why our £5 billion pound a year public broadcaster is pushing a clickbait story though.. Kardashian! Vaginal! Health! Definitely worth taking all that money from crafted journalism and Broadcasting for online isn't it.

The GB News problem is not allowing the 'express' bait online to damage perception shift of the channel it needs to build to get high value advertising spend

[Adsales]

I generally agree,  Adsales.

The reality for all media business is audience = impacts = revenue . Do media owners particularly care if its a love or hate click?  Not one bit

Not sure why our £5 billion pound a year public broadcaster is pushing a clickbait story  though.. Kardashian! Vaginal! Health!  Definitely worth taking all that money from crafted journalism and Broadcasting for online isn't it.

The GB News problem is not allowing the 'express' bait online to damage perception  shift of the channel it needs to build to get high value advertising spend

Fully agree. Online audience, irrelevant of the reason for it being there, translates into revenue.

That is just how is and nothing wrong with that. An Amazon banner will be seen whether someone reads a website in disbelief or because they like it.

So for a website in isolation (or where the primary product - e.g. the Daily Express paper - is bleeding revenue and online can replace some or all of that) that makes perfect business sense.

My point was, just to be clear, that GBN’s ambitious goal as announced a few days ago, is not helped by making its website look like click bait and by doing anything that takes away from a trustworthy brand image.

It’s the brand GBN that needs to be perceived differently in order to become a trustworthy source of news if the channel is to get anywhere near being “number one” by 2028.

To be fair, I don’t think that’s a real aim anyway but rather a whole lot of bluster to appear relevant. And considering the money will sooner or later run out, increasing online revenue no matter how of course makes sense. But it does nothing to detoxify the brand for those who are not already watching GBN or using its website.

[London Lite]

I've just had a look at the front page of Fox News's website for comparison and it's bang on target for their audience editorially.

[Scrotnig]

The style of the website has definitely changed.

A quick glance and the first headline starts with “REVEALED:”. I hate that type of headline and won’t ever click on them.

Tabloid nonsense. This won’t do them any favours.

[Brekkie]

GB News is the very definition of clickbait so it's no surprise the website follows suit.

[Scrotnig]

GB News is the very definition of clickbait so it's no surprise the website follows suit.

The channel does not use that style at all.  It’s nothing like the actual channel.

It feels really out of kilter now, the website.

[Matrix]

GB News is the very definition of clickbait so it's no surprise the website follows suit.

The channel does not use that style at all.  It’s nothing like the actual channel.

It feels really out of kilter now, the website.

The reality is, though, that click bait (or rather clip bait) is exactly what the channel does. 

As Brekkie says, it’s almost definitional. From its very inception, they’ve talked about being able to package clips up for socials and invariably the style lends itself to leading questions which are then clipped. ‘Surely you must… isn’t the counter argument…’ etc.

[MFTJA]

GBN could easily position themselves as a high-brow, right-wing station, but they don’t seem to care about their reputation at all.

I still follow them on Twitter (more for entertainment than “news”) and the content gets worse day-by-day. For example, an article was published with this headline earlier: “Iconic high street fashion chain to shut shops for good THIS MONTH just weeks after last round of closures“. This article was about New Look - hardly that “iconic,” furthermore, they seem to be closing 6 poorly performing stores, and opening 4 new ones. This is far from drastic and is how businesses tend to work.

I’d imagine that more of the “respected“ presenters will start to leave GB News in due course. This would leave the channel full of conspiracy theories and echo chambers, but surely a channel based on those two things cannot survive for long.