Alastair Stewart has praise for two GB News fan-favourites as he joins Miriam Cates to mark major milestone
Veteran Broadcaster Alastair Stewart has revealed his two fan-favourites at GB News as the People’s Channel marks its fourth birthday.
Reflecting on the launch in 2021, former presenter Alastair Stewart hailed the “brilliant” channel and its current presenters, celebrating the major milestone.
Heaping praise on the “wonderful” team at GB News, Alastair told host Miriam Cates: “Thank you so much for having me on, and a very happy birthday to you, one of the many brilliant faces, as we call it, in the trade, presenting programs.
“But also to the absolutely wonderful team of technicians that you’ve got behind you, making sure that this all gets on air very smoothly.”
Reflecting on the beginning of the People’s Channel, Alastair recalled the temporary “technical difficulties” that GB News powered through to make it the success it is today.
He recounted: “Seeing you relaxed, chatting to lovely people like Bill Green, one of our viewers, it all works terribly well. It didn’t initially, we had quite a lot of technical problems, as many folk will remember.
“I think one of the most common phrases was ‘I’m sorry, we’ll get back to him or her when we can’.
Revealing what drew him to joining GB News, Alastair claimed that he had a feeling “deep down” that the mainstream channels were becoming “too complacent”.
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Alastair told Miriam: “There was something deep down in me, I just left ITV news, ITN, as we used to call it in the good old days, and I had a growing feeling that ITN and the BBC, not Sky, but those two mainstream terrestrial news networks had become very complacent and dangerously self-satisfied.
“If they weren’t taking leaks from people to try and get rid of Boris Johnson, they were actively campaigning to try and reverse the Brexit decision. And we knew that as individual journalists, that’s not what people actually wanted, nor what they were thinking.”
He added: “And so when we talk about GB News being the People’s Channel, what you think at home is what matters to us. We will react to it, we’ll get the right people to talk about it and develop it, and I thought to myself that if we can stick with that and we can attract the right people to join the team, we would succeed.”
Hailing two of GB News’s presenters, Alastair revealed who has been “brilliant” in helping the People’s Channel become so successful.
Alastair said: “I’m deeply honoured to follow the brilliant Mark White, who was not an original founding reporter, but is one of the standout investigative journalists of his generation, as is Charlie Peters. So I’m glad to hear he is co-presenting Trooping the Colour this year, which I shall be watching with great, with great keenness.
“But as we trucked along and the leadership, people like Mick Booker, another one who joined us a wee bit later on, Angelos, who was there from the very beginning and established Sky in Australia, I just had a feeling that ITN and BBC had left the door open and it was an open goal.
“And if we kicked hard enough and were honest enough with ourselves and truthful enough to our viewers, we would succeed, and goodness me, we have.”
Praising GB News further, he added: “We’ve not only hung on in there, but we’ve now got TV, radio as well and online. We’re huge. We get quite good numbers on viewing, very, very good numbers on listening, well ahead of some of the other competitors.”