TV in the
UK has always been influenced by US trends – but with Court TV, Andrew Neil’s news venture and the possibility of Paul Dacre at Ofcom a tipping point could be reached
The US has always been the laboratory for
British television, with everything there reaching screens here. Only three major aspects of the US schedules have not yet been significantly exported – live courtroom broadcasts, politically partisan Fox News-style reporting and nightly comedy-and-chat in the manner of The
Tonight Show and David Letterman.
But Sky has just started screening Court TV in the UK (though featuring US, rather than British, cases), and the planned launches of two startup factual TV channels – GB News (chaired, and featuring on screen, the broadcaster Andrew Neil) and Times Television (a visual extension of Rupert Murdoch’s Times Radio). Both have been promoted as a Fox-ing up of British TV journalism. And rumoured scheduling plans suggest that either or both may attempt something like
The Tonight Show to close out the evening.