Simon McCoy of the BBC

[JW]

Seth Meyers tweeted:

"I did not know of @BBCSimonMcCoy until today and yet, this thread has be[sic] deeply sad that he is leaving."

https://twitter.com/scottygb/status/1375014234304692225

[Dave Sikula]

Despite the mention of my hometown in the dog-surfing clip, all I can say is that British and American senses of humor are different. I guess this guy will be missed? But not by me.

--Dave Sikula

[Brad Beam]

From: tvor...@googlegroups.com [mailto:tvor...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of JW

>Seth Meyers tweeted:

> 

>"I did not know of @BBCSimonMcCoy until today and yet, this thread has be[sic] deeply sad that he is leaving."

 

Buried in the comments – Mr McCoy will be moving to GB News, previously discussed on here as a possible Trojan fox for sneaking right-wing news past Ofcom.

 

_   _

|_>|_>  Brad Beam- Belle WV

|_>|_>  http://www.facebook.com/74bmw

[Adam Bowie]

Simon McCoy is certainly a character, although he's one of those people who can shift from serious news into something a bit lighter fairly seamlessly. Not mentioned in that Twitter thread is the time he interviewed a children's glove puppet (Basil Brush - think a mischievous muppet), or the time he interviewed an actor playing a character from the BBC-set sitcom W1A, as though he was a real person. That was probably as meta a thing as I've seen at the BBC.

https://twitter.com/bbcsimonmccoy/status/929035613508050944?lang=en

On Fri, Mar 26, 2021 at 2:05 AM Brad Beam <b.b...@suddenlink.net> wrote:

From: tvor...@googlegroups.com [mailto:tvor...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of JW

>Seth Meyers tweeted:

> 

>"I did not know of @BBCSimonMcCoy until today and yet, this thread has be[sic] deeply sad that he is leaving."

 

Buried in the comments – Mr McCoy will be moving to GB News, previously discussed on here as a possible Trojan fox for sneaking right-wing news past Ofcom.

It's worth saying that you can't completely do a version of Fox News in the UK because of the impartiality rules. What you can do is balance a right leaning commentator with a left leaning one - each of them getting their own show. It's kind of presumed that this is what GB News is likely to do. The most notable example of this is in radio (where the same rules apply) and LBC - a news station. They have a breakfast show presenter who's probably a little to the right, followed  by a morning show that leans left. The afternoon presenter is probably centre-left and then there's an evening presenter who's centre-right. 

Basically, they can't fill the airwaves with right-wingers and not get rapped by Ofcom - an authority who can ultimately take a service off-air.

I don't know what McCoy's personal politics are - the BBC doesn't allow its news presenters to show any kind of political bias on air. I'd suspect that he'll play a fairly central role. Even Andrew Neil, the former editor of Murdoch's The Sunday Times, and the editorial lead behind GB News, managed to play a very straight bat when conducting political interviews on the BBC as he has done for a number of years before leaving to start this new channel.

That all said, this is certainly going to be a story to keep an eye on. The proposed launch date has slipped a few times - perhaps inevitably given the pandemic. (And Comcast last year completely cancelled a proposed NBC/Sky News global news competitor to CNN that they had been planning and started recruiting for).

Adam