 | A major contributor to this article appears to have a close connection with its subject.(November 2017) |
18 Doughty Street was a British internet-based political broadcaster that hosted a webcast as its chief product. It began broadcasting at 18:55 on 10 October 2006, [1] from its studio at 18 Doughty Street in the Bloomsbury area of London, and ceased broadcasting at 23:00 on Thursday 8 November 2007. It claimed to be Britain's first internet-based TV station.
Doughty Media Limited [2] [3] [4] was funded by Stephan Shakespeare and its core presenters at launch included Iain Dale, Tim Montgomerie, Rena Valeh, Zoe Phillips and Donal Blaney. Alex Story, a director of the company at the time of the launch, was the creator of 18 Doughty Street. He wrote the concept on which the station was based, built the studio, and initially organised the production of the channel. Story developed the idea of creating a news platform that would challenge the dominance of terrestrial TV stations over the course of 2005 when he stood for parliament in Denton and Reddish. He took his idea of an on-line TV station to Stephan Shakespeare during the first half of 2006.
The station used live video streaming technology in a Windows format to webcast from 19:00 until midnight from Monday to Friday, with all programmes being made available to stream again shortly after the programme had aired. Due to the technology of the time, viewers could not download archived videos to their computer or portable device directly from the site, although a video podcast service of all archive videos was offered shortly before the station ceased broadcasting.
Although it called itself a "TV station", legally it was not, so did not operate under the Ofcom Broadcasting Code, which requires "due impartiality" and prevents politicians being newsreaders, interviewers or reporters in any news programme. [5]
At the point of launch, there were four directors of the company; Alex Story, Iain Dale, Tim Montgomerie and Stephan Shakespeare, all Conservative Party members and self-described conservatives, but did not represent the Conservative Party in an official capacity on the station. [6] In late 2006 Story left as a director of the company, followed by the resignations of Montgomerie around March 2007 and of Donal Blaney in October 2007, followed by Dale later in around December 2007. [7] The latter three were said to be leaving to focus on other projects. For Story, the aim of the channel was to provide an intellectual and cultural platform to take-on the political orthodoxy of the time; for other directors, the channel was to be narrowly focused on the politics of Westminster.
Montgomerie suddenly left 18 Doughty Street around March 2007 to work on other products and was replaced by Shane Greer, who became a full-time presenter at the station whilst also acting as executive director of right-wing think tank Young Britons' Foundation. The station also hosted programmes produced and presented by Alan Mendoza, Peter Tatchell, Christian Wolmar, Christine Constable and Claire Fox.
On 22 January 2007 a redesign of the website was launched to promote additional services that 18 Doughty Street wanted to produce: written news and opinion, news links, and what was billed as a series of controversial "attack" adverts that were to be released on a weekly basis. However, only four were ever produced and their cost rumoured to be disproportionate to success. The total makeover was also supposed to realise the citizen journalism element of 18 Doughty Street and allowed contributors to submit videos for inclusion in the website publications and live productions. However, this project had no success. Against the professional advice of Story, Montgomerie bought 100 Sanyo C5 digital camcorders, but only a handful of videos were received among reports of technical difficulties with the externally developed platform and a lack of editing skills.[ citation needed ]
18 Doughty Street stopped broadcasting on 19 November 2007 claiming that it was being taken off-air to make a range of improvements. [8] Around the same time Donal Blaney and Iain Dale also decided to leave the station [9] leaving Stephan Shakespeare as the sole remaining director of the company. With the core team gone, including the resignations or sackings of production and back office staff, and rumours of a lack of interest from potential investors the project finally collapsed completely when main investor Shakespeare decided instead to start PoliticsHome in the same building in partnership with Freddie Sayers and also led by the return of some staff, including former director Tim Montgomerie, who had previously resigned from 18 Doughty Street after a disagreement over its direction.
18 Doughty Street displayed its brand on a website called The Fisk that featured a variety of contributors critiquing left-leaning commentary and opinion pieces. Following the resignation of Tim Montgomerie from 18 Doughty Street, the website has been re-branded under Conservative Home as part of Stephan Shakespeare's efforts to move the TV station away from the right-wing area of politics.
18 Doughty Street also launched conservative websites CentreRight.com and BritainAndAmerica.com in early 2007, prior to Montgomerie's departure. CentreRight.com still carries 18 Doughty Street branding, whereas BritainAndAmerica has been rebranded under Conservative Home. Although it was already operational, CentreRight.com launched again [10] in January 2008.
Former leader of the Conservative Party and founder of the Centre for Social Justice Iain Duncan-Smith MP appeared on Issue of the Hour and One to One from the station's start.
Other guests included:
The channel created a series of adverts intended to raise public awareness on selected issues. Topics included taxation, [11] state funding of political parties, [12] and the Labour politician and then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone. Users of the channel's website were invited to vote between a number of alternative outlines, the winner being made into a campaign advert. [13]
The Conservative Democratic Alliance (CDA) was a political pressure group from the United Kingdom. The CDA referred to itself as the "authentic voice of conservatism". It closed in December 2008.
CHUM Limited was a Canadian media company based in Toronto, Ontario in operation from 1945 to 2007. The company was founded in 1945 as York Broadcasters Limited when it launched CHUM-AM 1050 but was acquired by salesman Allan Waters in 1954. CHUM had expanded to and owned 33 radio stations across Canada under its CHUM Radio Network division and also owned other radio stations.
James Gray, CStJ is a British politician who has served as the Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) for North Wiltshire since 1997.
The Freedom Association (TFA) is a pressure group in the United Kingdom that describes itself as "a non-partisan, classically liberal campaign group", which has links to the Conservative Party and UK Independence Party (UKIP). TFA was founded in 1975 as the National Association for Freedom (NAFF) and gained public prominence through its anti-trade union campaigns. Its popularity grew after campaigning against perceived abuses to individual freedom including big business, big government, organised labour and Irish political violence. By the end of the 1970s the organisation had around 20,000 members.
The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) is an independent centre-right think tank based in the United Kingdom, co-founded in 2004 by Iain Duncan Smith, Tim Montgomerie, Mark Florman and Philippa Stroud.
Iain Dale is a British broadcaster, author, political commentator, and attempted politician, and a former publisher and book retailer. He has been a blogger since 2002. He was the publisher of the Total Politics magazine between 2008 and 2012, and the managing director of Biteback Publishing until May 2018. Since September 2010, he has hosted a regular discussion show on the radio station LBC. He was named Radio Presenter of the Year at the Arqiva Commercial Radio Awards in 2013 and 2016. On 28 May 2024, he announced that he was quitting his LBC roles to run as an MP in the 2024 United Kingdom general election. On 31 May 2024, he announced he was abandoning his campaign to run as an MP.
The National Fellowship was a minor right-wing libertarian conservative political party in the United Kingdom.
Timothy Montgomerie is a British political activist, blogger, and columnist. He is best known as the co-founder of the Centre for Social Justice and as creator of the ConservativeHome website, which he edited from 2005 until 2013, when he left to join The Times. He was formerly the newspaper's comment editor, but resigned in March 2014. On 17 February 2016, Montgomerie resigned his membership of the Conservative Party, citing the leadership's stance on Europe, which was then supportive of EU membership. In 2019, he was briefly a special adviser to Prime Minister Boris Johnson, advising on social justice issues.
Stephan Adrian Shakespeare is the German-British co-founder and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the British Internet-based market research and opinion polls company YouGov.
ConservativeHome is a British right-wing blog which supports the Conservative Party. It was first established by Tim Montgomerie in 2005 with the aim of arguing for a broad conservative spectrum, which is serious about both social justice and a fair competitive economy. A second aim of the blog is to represent grassroots Conservatives, and is supportive of the Conservative Party.
Edward Glyn Davies is a former Welsh Conservative politician who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Montgomeryshire from 2010 to 2019. Davies previously served as a Member of the Welsh Assembly (AM) for the Mid and West Wales region from 1999 to 2007.
LabourList is a British news website supportive of, but independent of, the Labour Party, launched in 2009. Describing itself as Labour's "biggest independent grassroots e-network", the site's content includes news, commentary, interviews, campaign information, analysis and opinion from various contributors and sources across the Labour and trade union movement. It is funded by trade unions, adverts, and individual donors. LabourList started as a weblog with reader comments, but in February 2019 the ability for readers to write comments was removed.
Virgin Media Television Ltd is a commercial television company in Ireland, based in Dublin. Launched in 1998 as TV3 Television Network, the TV3 Group was formed in January 2009. The company was acquired by Liberty Global in 2015, and the channels were rebranded to Virgin Media Television in 2018.
JACK FM was an adult hits format radio station that broadcast on 106.8 MHz FM in Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom, and on DAB in Oxfordshire. Between 2016 and 2017 it also broadcast in Surrey and parts of Hampshire. The station shared premises in Eynsham, Oxfordshire, with its sister stations JACK 2 and JACK 3.
The Young Britons' Foundation, abbreviated to YBF, was a British conservative not-for-profit training, education and research think-tank, established in July 2003.
Mark James Littlewood is a director of Popular Development Partners Limited. He was formerly the director general of the libertarian free market Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), and before that the chief press spokesman for the Liberal Democrats and the Pro-Euro Conservative Party and was an advisor to the Conservative Party under Prime Minister David Cameron. Having previously been in favour of deeper European integration, Littlewood later adopted a eurosceptic position and advocated voting Leave in the 2016 referendum on Membership of the European Union.
Guido Fawkes is a right-wing political website published by British-Irish political blogger Paul Staines.
Rachel A. Blaney is a Canadian politician who represents the federal electoral district of North Island—Powell River in the House of Commons. She was elected during the 2015 Canadian federal election to the 42nd Parliament and re-elected in the 2019 election to the 43rd Parliament. A member of the New Democratic Party was a member of an opposition party during both parliaments. During the 42nd Parliament she served as the party's critic for multiculturalism and then for seniors issues and veteran affairs. She introduced two bills: An Act to amend the Canadian Bill of Rights which sought to add the right to proper housing free of unreasonable barriers into the Canadian Bill of Rights, though it was defeated at second reading, and An Act to amend the Old Age Security Act to provide guaranteed income supplement recipients assistance in filing yearly taxes. During the 43rd Parliament, she became the NDP whip, remained critic for veteran affairs, and introduced one bill, An Act to establish National Food Waste Awareness Day and to provide for the development of a national strategy to reduce food waste in Canada, which if passed would have required the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food to create a national strategy to reduce food waste.
Mark Clarke is a British former Conservative Party parliamentary candidate who was director of the now-defunct Young Britons' Foundation, as well as a chairman of Conservative Future, and ex-director of the Road Trip electioneering organisation that bussed Conservative party activists to marginal seats during the 2015 general election campaign. Clarke was suspended from the party on 24 September 2015, following the suicide of Conservative activist Elliott Johnson who had claimed that Clarke had bullied him.
Mark Edwin Wallace is a British journalist, newspaper columnist and political activist. He is Chief Executive of the website ConservativeHome, and is a former Campaign Director of the TaxPayers' Alliance.