Ear Candy: Electoral Dysfunction
Especially in the politics genre, where the likes of Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart’s The Rest Is Politics and George Osbourne and Ed Balls’ Political Currency continue to hold office.
Especially in the politics genre, where the likes of Alastair Campbell and Rory Stewart’s The Rest Is Politics and George Osbourne and Ed Balls’ Political Currency continue to hold office.
Starting with the 2014 Scottish independence referendum and tunnelling through to the government implosion of 2022, we’re on a whistle-stop tour of all the political drama she has covered as a lobby journalist over the past 13 years. It’s quite a sight. It takes serious patience to keep up with the volatile world of British politics, but Rigby has been laser focused on the beat since 2010.
One of the best things about being the political editor of a rolling 24-hour news channel is breaking news. Nothing feels as vital or as exhilarating as a big political moment, be it a knife-edge vote or the election of a new party leader, and there’s no greater privilege than being the person to relay that news to viewers and dissect what it means.
After 30 years of investment as the centrepiece of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, it was no wonder there was a battle of suitably high drama when Sky Group went on sale in 2018 – nor that it went to Comcast for the tidy sum of $39bn (£28.5bn).
Three years on, former Comcast executive Dana Strong is Sky’s new CEO, replacing Jeremy Darroch after his 13-year tenure.
The new Group Chief Executive at Sky talks to Beth Rigby about her ambitions for the company.
Earlier, the RTS convention had been told that, as a brand, Netflix today enjoyed the same high levels of public trust as the BBC. As for the TikTok-using, mobile-addicted members of Generation Z, the BBC looked to be completely under the radar.
Now it was the time for Tony Hall, the BBC’s Director-General, to respond. He did so in a wide-ranging, troop-rallying speech, and argued that, in today’s age of uncertainty, characterised by propaganda and disinformation, the BBC and public service broadcasting were more important than ever.
BBC's Tony Hall set out why, at a time of change and uncertainty, public service broadcasting is more important than ever. He is joined by Sky News' Political Editor Beth Rigby.
Beth Rigby is the stand-out political broadcaster of our times. This is despite the former print journalist having been on our screens for only three years. No one asks the acute, no-nonsense yet empathetic questions like the new political editor of Sky News. And no one does it in her accent.
She drops so many Gs that Rigby dreads party conferences in Birmin’ham. We worked together on the Times, where she was a scoop-winning media editor – and when I saw her first steps on Sky News I knew, as her bosses obviously did, that a star had been born.
Rigby had a front row seat to the Conservative campaign, as Theresa May’s approval ratings drooped in the aftermath of the controversial social care policy outlined in the Tory manifesto.