David Rhodes, the executive chairman of Sky News, was hired by Rupert Murdoch to map out TalkTV - but Murdoch ignored his advice
‘I just think that there wasn’t a television path for them,’ says David Rhodes, executive chairman of Sky News Group
And what happened? Rupert’s ego led him to ignore Rhodes’s advice and instead go head to head with the fledgling, by launching a rolling news channel in 2022 to compete for a fabled audience that supposedly covets right-leaning current affairs coverage 24-7. “So I am not surprised that they have chosen to take a more digital path, I just think that there wasn’t a television path for them. We did a lot of analysis at the time I was at the company of the different ways to market and television was not a compelling one. The decision to go ahead anyway came after I left.”
Sky News currently depends on Palestinian stringers. “We have local teams of journalists supplying work to Sky – co-ordinated from without but operating from within Gaza.” Transparency of sourcing is essential, he says.Sky News loses money but has a £100m news-gathering budget under its American owner Comcast and has upped its spend on digital products by 40 per cent.
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