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On Tuesday, June 27, 2023, GB News picked up two awards from the Television and Radio Industries Club, TRIC, which is celebrating its 54th year.
TRIC was formed to promote good will amongst those engaged in the audio, visual, communication and allied industries.
This year was the first time that viewers were allowed to vote for their favourite presenters and shows.
GB News’s head of programming, Ben Briscoe, tweeted that the channel won two awards, one for GB News Breakfast and the other for Nigel Farage as news presenter:
Note that Ben Briscoe came to GB News via the Murdoch-owned TalkTV, where he was the series editor for Piers Morgan Uncensored, and ITV, where he was Assistant Editor of Good Morning Britain.
These are not the channel’s first TRIC awards. In 2022, just a year after it began broadcasting, Eamonn Holmes won as breakfast show presenter. Since then, Holmes now co-hosts the weekend breakfast show with Isabel Webster while Ellie Costello and Stephen Dixon, pictured below at the Grovesnor House where the ceremony took place, have the weekday slot:
Ellie has been with GB News from the beginning, having started out as a London and South East England roving reporter in June 2021. Although I am not a daytime GB News viewer, everyone’s mad for Stephen Dixon, who is, apparently, everything one could want in a breakfast show presenter.
GB News Breakfast won the Multichannel News Programme award:
However, those of us who watch GB News in the evenings were delighted that former UKIP leader and former MEP Nigel Farage won the News Presenter award:
Fans were quick to repeat the line that Farage gave the European Parliament when the UK voted for Brexit in the June 23, 2016 referendum — ‘They’re not laughing now’:
Ironically, the event’s sponsor, Euronics, a white goods reseller, asked him to leave the drinks reception before the ceremony started. Sad:
And to think he was so happy to be there:
Guido Fawkes was quick to post the news about Farage’s award, which the other media celebs present did not appreciate:
Those assembled began shouting ‘Off, off, off’ while he gave his acceptance speech. Farage encouraged them to be louder, as the EU Parliament had been several years ago. They duly complied, to the point where the hosts of the event escorted Farage from the stage:
Guido has a video of the first part of Farage’s speech, where the audience were reasonably polite …
… and the following write-up (emphases Guido’s):
Nigel Farage has just won News Presenter of the Year at the TRIC Awards, and the metropolitan liberal audience has reacted entirely predictably: they booed and jeered throughout his acceptance speech. Having beaten the likes of Susanna Reid, Eamonn Holmes and Piers Morgan (commiserations Piers), Farage dismissed the “off, off, off” chants exactly as you’d expect:
I am really rather proud to have this because I’m a new boy – I have only been doing this for a couple of years. So a huge thank to all those good, ordinary folk who live outside the M25 [London area] for voting for me… Please keep the abuse coming, because it says a lot more about you than about me.
This might be the perfect demonstration of the gulf between the Twitterati types and everyone else. Farage won the public vote, yet the people quaffing champagne in the room as he collected the award couldn’t bear it. He was even asked to leave the drinks reception just before the ceremony. Congratulations Nigel…
Hat-tip: Joe Kasper
A good friend sent his congratulations:
I bet that is the first and last time TRIC opens its award nominees list to a public vote:
Well done, Nigel, Ellie, Stephen, their production teams and everyone who works at GB News.
Churchmouse Campanologist 