Guido has long suspected Times Radio would struggle to stay, though it sounds like their unpublished listener numbers are falling well below what they need. Launching a new apprenticeship drive today, the second question asked of applicants is “how would you get your friends to listen to the station?” Perhaps coercion and bribery would work?
The surely desperate listening figures improvement drive comes just a day after one of their original star signings, Gloria De Piero, quit the station in favour of GB News. Her broadcast partner Tom Newton Dunn looks to be readying a lifeboat in case the station hits the iceberg, starting a column with the Evening Standard. Times Radio’s digital whizz-kid Gareth Milner, a former DExEU SpAd, has also jumped ship to GB News to become their new digital producer. A year ago, Guido calculated Times Radio would have to generate 35,000 new Times Digital subscriptions to make it financially viable. Wonder how that’s gone?
Former Labour MP Gloria De Piero dug into the party’s new leader yesterday following his extraordinarily brazen Sunday Telegraph article yesterday, appropriating the language of “Get Brexit Done”, after spending three years as the driving force within the Labour Party to reverse the referendum. Guido is having a hard time keeping track of the opposition’s flip flops: schools, lockdowns, eat out to help out, masks, tax hikes, and Brexit too…
Gloria set out Sir Keir’s problem succinctly:
“It is literally the reverse of his position before the election. It plays into the hands of the Tories who are trying to paint him as a lawyer who changes his position to suit.”
Although Guido isn’t sure the Tories are onto a winner with the lawyer jibes. A source in the polling world tells a very surprised Guido that ‘lawyer’ is among the most respected professions in the UK, particularly among C2DE demographics. One of the least respected? Journalists. Guido’s not sure Boris fighting on past professions will work all that well…
Guido understands that Gloria De Piero will have the Friday and Saturday mid-morning show on Times Radio. The glamorous former Labour MP and TV presenter will add yet another remain-backing presenter to the roster. Am told she will have an as-yet-unannounced assistant presenter, and it will be a case of “beauty and the beast”…
All these new hires are adding to the growing wage bill for Times Radio in the Shard. Guido is told that the economics of the enterprise are viable if Times Radio generates 35,000 new subscribers to The Times digital subscription package, which should be worth circa £10 million. This is The Spectator’s successful model, giving away free podcasts and Spectator Radio content to make people aware of the merits of the magazine and consequently driving subscribers and attendance to their lucrative ticketed events. The Spectator, however, mostly uses existing staff rather than hiring additional staff. It remains to be seen if the lure of Matt Chorley’s jokes will be enough to get punters to pull out their credit cards and stump up some three hundred quid for an annual Times digital subscription…
Labour MP Gloria De Piero will face a tricky re-election battle come the next election and not just because she sits on a wafer thin 441 vote majority over the Conservatives. Her former Office Manager Lee Anderson was last night selected to fight the seat for the Tories. Former miner, De Piero’s office manager, and former Labour Councillor Anderson defected to the Tories just over a year ago, but continued to work for the Labour MP for a time. Awkward…
Gloria De Piero has liked a Facebook status from a local Labour member saying that “Jeremy Corbyn would walk blind folded through a burning orphanage to avoid spelling out what his Brexit position is.” Frontbenchers usually try to be more quiet about their disdain for their hopeless leader…
UPDATE: A source close to Gloria has been in touch to say that she “fully supports” Labour’s Brexit position, that she has unliked the post and doesn’t know how it was liked in the first place. Big thumbs seem to be a problem for a lot of politicians recently…
Gloria De Piero has, as befits a former TV presenter, produced a campaign video which urges Labour voters to get out on June 9.
It’s not a typo she actually says it in the video. Gloria, the election is June 8…
