A photo of Sky News Australia’s studio,
Whats New? – Licence CC BY-SA 2.0
If you’re driving along the Great West Road through the London suburb of Osterley and see a dark cloud moving towards some outsized sheds, it may well be one of those gathering above the Sky News studios.
As recently redundant Sky anchor Fatty Boulton turns in his gravy (with chips and massive pie) Sky News and its ratings continue to sink. Known on these pages as Lie News or Sly News, the newspapers gloats that Lie’s viewing figures have fallen to a paltry 70,000 per hour.
Last July the Telegraph reported the troubled rolling news channel was slashing freelance budgets as viewing figures slumped. The broadcaster was cutting costs as it grappled with an exodus from traditional TV to streaming.
In a December article, the Guardian reported from another front that Sky is having to battle. Bucking the steaming trend, data from the TV rating agency Barb showed GB News increased its viewership and overtook Sky News for live TV viewing across one month for the first time. The average audience for Sky News had now sunk to 67,670.
It wasn’t always so. Or maybe it was?
Sky News launched in the UK on February 5, 1989, as a 24-hour rolling news channel under the ownership of Sky Television, founded by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation.
Later merging with British Satellite Broadcasting to form BSkyB in 1990, throughout that decade the channel struggled with low viewership and financial losses. However, Sky News did establish itself in the British broadcasting bubble and won London media clique awards for its coverage of events such as the Gulf War and the death of Princess Diana. In the 2000s, the channel embraced digital, expanding online and onto mobile apps.
But the channel was never a major profit driver for Sky, as rolling news channels in general struggle to produce high advertising revenue. Hence Mohammed’s never-ending ad-break struggle to find the well and the plight of Third World donkeys.
Into the 2010s, Sky News continued in the red with reports suggesting annual losses of around £20–£30 million. However, Sky viewed the channel as an important brand asset, helping to enhance its credibility and regulatory standing in the UK. In 2017, when 21st Century Fox attempted to fully acquire Sky, concerns over Sky News’ editorial independence led to regulatory scrutiny.
In 2018, Comcast did acquire Sky plc for £30.6 billion, outbidding the Disney-backed Fox Corporation. As part of the deal, Comcast pledged to fund Sky News for at least 10 years, ensuring its continued operation and ‘editorial independence’ with the news channel’s losses justified as a strategic investment that boosts Sky’s reputation within the London political bubble.
As for ‘editorial independence’, Comcast (also known as Communistcast) donated $366,551 to Kamala Harris, $270,081 to the Democratic National Committee Services Corp and spent $7,317,000 ‘lobbying’ American politicians during the 2024 electoral cycle. In other international news, Comcast is hopelessly compromised given its eyewatering financial exposure in China. Their Universal Studios Beijing Resort theme park alone has cost over $3 billion to construct.
In 2018, when taken over by Comcast, SKY News was said to be losing £40 million a year. Despite any losses, Sky UK is required by law to provide a news service as part of its broadcasting license conditions. Under the Communications Act 2003, public service obligations apply to certain UK broadcasters, and Sky’s broadcasting license includes a requirement to provide ‘impartial’ news coverage.
This is regulated by Ofcom, the UK’s communications regulator, which claims to ensure that licensed broadcasters adhere to rules on what the establishment claims to be accuracy, impartiality, and due impartiality in news reporting.
Historically, Sky News was seen as fulfilling this obligation for Sky’s satellite platform, and when Comcast acquired Sky in 2018, it committed to maintaining Sky News as an editorially independent service. Without Sky News, Sky would likely need to find another way to fulfil its regulatory obligations for news provision.
Post-2018 worse was to follow with the broadcaster having a bad pandemic. The channel’s divas Beff Rigby and Kay Burley were caught partying during London’s December 2020 tier 2 coronavirus restrictions. Rather than being sacked, they were suspended for six months while the channel made political capital out of Boris Johnson’s similar Partygate embarrassments.
MeToo and Black Lives Matter also intervened with a resulting question mark being placed beside the male and the pale – including Adam Fatty Bunter Boulton. Rivals GB News began broadcasting in May 2021, with Boulton being shown the door the following November.
In an interview with The Times, he explained: “It looks like the direction which Sky News wants to go over the next few years is not one that’s a particularly good fit for me. Sky News head John Ryley believes the future of news is digital, is on the platform for phones and is very strongly based around data journalism. At that point you do start thinking.”
Beyond the technology, Thomas Adam Babington Boulton ticked all the wrong boxes. Middle-aged, male, pale and blueblooded, Adam’s first wife was The Honourable Kerena Anne, the sister of Peter Mond, 4th Baron Melchett, and the eldest daughter of Julian Edward Alfred Mond, 3rd Baron Melchett.
A Westminster School old boy and graduate of Christ Church, Oxford, at least Fatty could speak England and string a sentence together. According to insiders, off-air he could also be unbearably rude to Beth Rigby.
Bunter’s successors, although of the right tinge, can barely speak.
Kamali Melbourne grinds through the autocue, pausing in all the wrong places. His emotionless delivery is like listening to a second-rate bingo caller falling asleep during a provincial Regal’s half past midnight ‘eyes down’.
Also passing the hew tue test but failing elsewhere is Yalda Hakim. Another funny talker, Yalda hails from Afghanistan. After her family relocated to Australia, she was educated at the Macarthur Girls High School in Parramatta, Sydney.
As proof that one degree of separation encompasses all, regular readers will recall that it was at an asylum in Parramatta that my relative Dr Worth-Saying was murdered by a lunatic in 1866.
Previously of the BBC, in January 2024 Hakim began hosting the foreign affairs programme The World with Yalda Hakim.
Being fluent in Dari, Urdu, and Pashto, Ms Hakim might just be a (fallen) Puffin. No matter, with woke box ticking taking precedence over viewers, Yalda’s ratings are said to be down to 60,000.
There is such thing as a Yalda Hakim Foundation, a sexist and racist organisation established to support education but only of young women from Afghanistan. Originally offering four-year scholarship programmes at the American University of Afghanistan, one suspects it now consists of a pile of rubble at which girls are taught how to cover themselves up and find a kitchen to lock themselves in.
At least the demise of Sky Lies was predicted. A May 2021 G-P article commemorating at the launch of GB News concluded that,
”It would be mean-spirited not to give GB News a chance, if only to watch it kill off SKY News, as it surely will.”
As we go to press, it has been announced that veteran Kay Burley will be leaving the broadcaster after 36 years. Further confirmation that in 2028, when Comcast’s current commitment ends, Lie News will cease broadcasting and be reduced to no more than a hollowed-out, AI-generated feed of aggregated news snippets posted to social media platforms alongside a SKY logo.
Good riddance.
© Always Worth Saying 2025
