Figures for coverage of London’s New Year’s Eve fireworks were released earlier this month, with Barb – which measures TV audiences – stating GB News had secured a record-breaking one million viewers.
The data meant it was the first time GB News had hit more than a million viewers since its 2021 launch, with the moment happening during the channel’s fireworks coverage around midnight.
However, it has now been revealed GB News, which was founded by Andrew Cole and Mark Scheider, averaged just 33,000 viewers that day which is significantly lower than Barb’s initial figure, to say the least.
In the wake of the numbers being released, a Barb spokesperson announced the error and said numbers which should have been attributed to other channels, such as BBC One, “may have instead gone to GB News”.
“The New Year’s Eve Fireworks were broadcast across several channels with very similar audio feeds,” they said.
“Barb’s ability to report which channel is being viewed relies partly on matching the audio output from TV sets to a channel.”
They continued to Metro.co.uk: “In this instance, our audio-matching process has incorrectly attributed some viewing of the New Year’s Eve Fireworks to GB News that should have been attributed to BBC One and other channels.”
According to the publication, Barb is investigating the issue and is set to release amended viewing data “as soon as possible”.
Express.co.uk has contacted GB News and Barb for comment on the figures.
The London New Year’s Eve fireworks were watched by 11 million BBC viewers, according to Broadcast magazine.
GB News aired a live New Year’s Eve show which was hosted by comedian Andrew Doyle which included a countdown to 2024 as well as the capital’s fireworks.
People have taken to social media to comment on the blunder, with on Twitter user writing: “I am not sure if there are 1 million people in the UK that have heard of GB News.”
A second user penned: “There was an error with BARB’s measurement of audience, attributing almost 1 million of those watching the fireworks on BBC1 to GB News. The unchecked overnight 1m figure was crowed about by various people on GB News, but now officially only a paltry 33,000 actually watched.” (sic)
A third shared: “So the claims of a million watching GB News on NYE were completely erroneous and were only out by over 900,000. I seem to remember you being quick to claim the ‘glory’ for the figures at the time. You gonna have the humility to admit it was garbage, as we all knew.”