News UK's plans to commercialise TalkTV extend well beyond linear and programmatic TV advertising, and the channel is positioning itself as a "broad church" of news, opinions and entertainment that is not fuelled by ideology.
Broadcasting boss Scott Taunton said there has been “genuine interest” from advertisers and potential sponsors ahead of TalkTV’s launch on 25 April.
It has already been announced that TalkTV will feature shows by Piers Morgan, Sharon Osbourne and Tom Newton Dunn during primetime, with a diverse range of correspondents signed up to its news and current affairs offering, but more on that below.
±±¾©Èü³µpk10 wanted to find out more about how it plans to commercialise, the structure of its sales operation and how the brand intends to position itself in a market that has recently seen the troubled launch of GB News, which has failed to deliver substantial ratings and veered more to the right side of politics in its coverage.
The launch is supported by a marketing campaign, fronted by Piers Morgan, with the strapline "Straight talking starts here". It will comrpise press and social media advertising and has been developed in a collaboration between News UK’s in-house advertising agency Pulse and The & Partnership.
Taunton is News UK’s executive vice-president, president of broadcasting, and is overseeing all aspects of TalkTV and its launch. He also led the launch of Times Radio, which has delivered solid radio ratings growth and is widely viewed in the industry as a success.
The News UK Broadcast division will have a dedicated sales team, led by commercial director David Wilcox, with more senior appointments in the pipeline. They will work alongside Sky Media, who will be responsible for TalkTV’s linear and programmatic advertising sales.
The Broadcast sales team will handle sponsorship opportunities, creative partnerships with brand agency partners, and work with partners across News UK on cross-platform solutions that align brands and campaigns across a range of newsbrands (print: The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun), or its radio assets (TalkRadio, TalkSports, Times Radio, podcasts).
Commercially, the “lion’s share” of TalkTV’s revenue will come from linear and programmatic TV advertising with the station airing on Freeview, Sky, Virgin Media and Freesat.
“We've got a pretty sensible business plan,” Taunton, who hails from Australia’s capital Canberra, said. “We are not setting out to take on Channel 4, ITV and BBC; that's not the channel that we're trying to build here. Nor are we trying to build quite a niche, rolling news service.
“We think we've got plenty of informative, opinionated and entertaining content that should appeal to a lot of people and deliver a modest share of viewing across TV. Importantly, we want to grow that interaction with audiences when they choose to view our content. We’re true to our word in delivering that choice to consumers and showcasing the journalism from across this business.”
Piers Morgan's Uncensored is TalkTV's flagship primetime programme and will also be shown in the US and Australia
A 'maze' of opportunity
Although the majority of revenue will come from TV ad sales, TalkTV’s broader strategy is to reach and monetise audiences wherever they are consuming TalkTV content, whether it is a pre-roll of a TalkTV segment on The Sun website, or broader cross-platform campaigns that sit across News UK brands. It will also simulcast on TalkRadio, providing further cross-platform opportunities for brands.
TalkRadio’s roster of daytime talent, including Julia Hartley-Brewer, Mike Graham, Ian Collins and Jeremy Kyle, will be broadcast on TalkTV.
Taunton said that News UK’s reach across its print and digital platforms is more than 40 million adults in the UK, and a cross-selling culture already exists and provides benefits.
This is where the Broadcast commercial team and sales operations within News UK’s brands come into play.
“The opportunities for the brand will be to activate across our various platforms; it's quite a maze of revenue opportunities and various CPTs and deals that are in place that vary from platform to platform,” Taunton said.
“I guess the model we're going for is we will be wherever the consumers' eyeballs and ears are, and we will monetise that in each of those locations. The apportionment of those revenues and viewing habits will change over time; we're already seeing that connected TV is becoming more of an important part of that; catch up and OTT as well.
"It's important in all of those platforms, including YouTube, that people can come in and watch a show that has already run, not just in a linear fashion.”
Taunton believes that programmes such as Piers Morgan’s Uncensored lends itself to being sliced up into sticky, bite-sized chunks of content that can be shared widely on digital channels, such as YouTube, which is important as much as a marketing tool as it is delivering incremental revenue.
So, too, is being able to leverage News UK talent across its various titles and bringing them onto TalkTV in a cohesive manner, despite the differences in tone and styles of journalism found in The Sun, The Times, on TalkSport and across other News UK platforms.
“TalkTV to me is a representation of the journalism and storytelling of this (News UK) building,” Taunton added. “At its core, it is a news offering, but actually, there'll be loads of current affairs, opinion, entertainment and sport that sit across it.”
Almost all of TalkTV’s output will come from the News UK stable, but there may be occasions where correspondents or interviews are used from Murdoch-owned titles abroad, such as The Wall Street Journal and Fox News in the US or Sky News Australia.
TalkTV has hired a diverse range of correspondents for The News Desk, anchored by Tom Newton Dunn
Taunton was speaking to ±±¾©Èü³µpk10 following a video call he held with scores of adland executives. He said that although “there is real interest” from the brands and agencies in TalkTV, some perceive that it is being launched behind a curtain of ideology.
Murdoch-owned TV networks in the US (Fox News) and Australia (Sky News Australia) have built an ideological reputation that has become somewhat toxic to advertisers, with some of their commentators being accused of peddling far right conspiracies and fake news.
Taunton wanted to make it clear that any concerns about TalkTV following this strategy are misplaced.
“If people still have that view at the end of night one, then we've completely failed, because that's genuinely not what we're building. This is a mainstream television service for the UK, and we understand that there is an opportunity to present the news differently,” he said.
“That difference doesn't come from ideology; it's about having that depth of insight and knowledge across the business and being able to reflect that in the output.”
The broadcasting chief said the range of talent they had already hired – such as Morgan, Osbourne and Newton Dunn – proved this, and that it’s important to have opinions from “all parts of the political spectrum” and without a regional bias.
The line-up of news correspondents (see image above) that will feature on Newton Dunn’s flagship nightly new programme, The News Desk, adds weight to his argument.
Among the line-up is Tan Dhesi, Labour MP for Slough and shadow minister for railways; Anas Sarwar, leader of the Scottish Labour Party and MSP for the Glasgow region; Bim Afolami, Conservative MP for Hitchin and Harpenden and vice chair of the Conservative Party and Miatta Fahnbulleh, chief executive of the New Economics Foundation.
There are also journalists outside the News UK stable (Emily Sheffield, former editor of the Evening Standard; and Grace Blakeley, author and staff writer at Tribune Magazine) and more familiar names within News UK.
Rather than building a TV network from the ground up, TalkTV will be drawing on its resources from across the News UK stable to launch a TV offering that provides the group with a truly print and audio visual offering.
As GB News has shown, entering the market with a new TV proposition is no mean feat, but News UK brings experience, talent and know-how. Time will tell whether that is enough to sway viewers and advertising investment.
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