It hasn’t been the positive start the channel would have hoped for since launching on Sunday.
GB News has only been on air for a matter of days but it has already lost several big name brands in advertising.
The upstart channel promised to take on so-called cancel culture, but Twitter users have already mocked the channel with hashtag GBeebies trending this week.
And now Ikea, cider firm Kopparberg and Octopus Energy have all withdrawn their adverts on the network following its launch.
GB News positioned itself as a rival to the news and current affairs offerings of the likes of BBC and Sky and is fronted by veteran broadcaster Andrew Neil.
He said the channel would not be “another echo chamber for the metropolitan mindset that already dominates so much of the media”.
But it has already faced accusations that it will be broadcasting US-style partisan news shows in the UK and advertisers were challenged on social media by campaign group Stop Funding Hate.
Swedish furniture giant Ikea was the first to distance itself from GB News and said it had “not knowingly” advertised on the channel.
It added: “We are in the process of investigating how this may have occurred to ensure it won’t happen again in future, and have suspended paid display advertising in the meantime.”
The decision was welcomed by some social media users, but GB News’ Andrew Neil unsurprisingly lashed out at the company.
He shared a story about the company’s French arm being fined £1 million and its CEO handed a two-year suspended sentence after it spied on employees for three years.
“IKEA has decided to boycott GB News because of our alleged values,” he wrote. “Here are IKEA’s values – a French CEO who is a criminal with a two year suspended jail sentence for spying on staff.”
Piers Morgan also took offence to the company’s decision.
He went on his own little rampage and confirmed he will be boycotting IKEA after he branded them “virtue-signalling twerps”.
Fellow Swedish company Kopparberg also claimed it wasn’t aware that its adverts were running on the channel and said they had been suspended “pending further review of its content”.
Octopus released a statement saying it would only advertise with GB News if the channel proved to be “genuinely balanced”.
And in a further blow the Open University also paused its advertising.
GB News was able to tempt a host of high-profile signings to its presenting lineup, including former Sky Sports presenter Kirsty Gallacher, ex-BBC presenter Simon McCoy and former ITV presenter Alastair Stewart.
In his opening monologue, former BBC political interviewer Neil said the channel will “puncture the pomposity of our elites in politics, business, media and academia and expose the growing promotion of cancel culture for the threat to free speech and democracy that it is”.
The channel will broadcast seven days a week across the UK and Ireland.
Originally from https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/several-big-brands-already-pull-24328410