A GB News presenter decided to carry on regardless after walking out on his prime-time show over an Ofcom dispute.
Mark Steyn quit after the channel tried to make him personally responsible for paying fines issued by the media regulator.
He is already subject to two investigations by the media regulator after he used his show to cast doubt on the safety of Covid vaccines.
Issues over his health had also been raised.
Steyn told fans that, after suffering two heart attacks in under a year, station bosses had insisted he could not return unless a defibrillator was fitted in the studio.
He said this was fixed with a call to “Defibrillators R Us”, only for Angelos Frangopoulos, GB News’s chief executive, to demand Steyn agree to personally cover the costs of dealing with Ofcom and paying any fines for breaches of the broadcasting code.
This is a highly unusual situation given the fines are the legal responsibility of the broadcast licence holder, not the individual presenter.
The news comes as Frangopoulos set out a plan to turn the start-up broadcaster into Britain’s biggest news channel while trimming “wasteful costs and inefficiencies”.
In a note to staff on Monday morning, seen by Press Gazette, he said the channel was now entering its “third phase”. The future of GB News will include “pivoting sharply towards financial sustainability and profit,” he said.
The first phase was launch, in June 2021, and the second consisted of “investment in people, talent, and programming while we relentlessly built a loyal audience,” he said.
The boss told staff that GB News’ business goal was to become “the number one news channel in the United Kingdom by 2028”.
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