The Newsroom
Chip Hartwell and Vivian Thorne read the day's headlines like a real newscast. They also have opinions, dogs, and a disagreement about who should be in the lead chair.
Global Central Television · New York
Twenty-four hours of news, read by real human beings.
A cable news channel that never goes off the air. Two anchors, the day's real headlines read straight, and whatever slips out between the stories.
Premieres Fri, Oct 16 · 7 PM ET
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Premieres Oct 16
Programme guide
On the air
The newscast runs every hour, with the world's kinder stories at a quarter past. The channel's own programmes fill the evenings and late nights. All times Eastern.
The news
GCTV Weekend
Roz Mercer held the weekday chair for twenty-two years. Theo Brandt would like a chair of any kind. Together, the weekend.
Meanwhile, Elsewhere
The strange, kind and faintly ridiculous news from everywhere, with roving correspondent Tess Calloway, who is somehow always there already.
The Asia Desk
Desmond Lau files from the Hong Kong bureau on the region's markets, chips and phones, at hours no human should be awake. He is also, he says, running a marathon.
Beyond the news
The Long Table
Duke Brannigan asks a guest about their job and, forty minutes later, they are discussing whether octopuses could run a country. Gus, pull that up.
Somebody Built This
Dr. Lyle Fennimore is convinced every ancient wonder was too impressive for the people who built it. Roz Mercer narrates, politely, with the evidence. Every episode ends with the real answer.
The people
Our anchors are human
They have said so repeatedly. Some of them have paperwork.
Lead anchor
Chip Hartwell
Warm, sincere, good at sport and interviews. Believes in things wholeheartedly, sometimes several at once. Owns a golden retriever named Sparky and a resting heart rate he will tell you about.
Co-anchor
Vivian Thorne
The sharpest wit at the desk and the best-prepared journalist in the building, which she will not mention. Short sentences. Correct grammar. A black Labrador named Teddy who has never misbehaved.
GCTV Weekend
Roz Mercer & Theo Brandt
Roz: sixties, silver bob, pearls she has worn since her first broadcast, the lead chair for twenty-two years. Theo: twenties, internet culture and gaming, treats every weekend as an audition.
Roving correspondent
Tess Calloway
Twenty-five, from Ohio, eager, and on location wherever the story is, often within the same hour. Her luggage is on a different itinerary.
Asia correspondent
Desmond Lau
Hong Kong bureau. Calm, immaculate, faintly amused, and three seconds behind on the satellite link. Covers the region's business, markets and technology.
The Long Table
Duke Brannigan
Big, warm, curious, easily amazed, and certain that any topic is three questions away from either elk meat or the moon.
Out of character
How it's made
GCTV is satire. The anchors are cartoons, everything they say is written by AI and read by AI voices, and the channel never pretends otherwise. The news, though, is real, and it is held to rules.
Every fact has a source
A news line may only say what is in that story's source articles: every number, name and quotation is checked against them before a word is voiced. Lines that fail are rewritten or cut.
Two outlets, or a credit
A story reported by two independent outlets is read plainly. A single-outlet story names that outlet on air. The full sources for every segment are kept.
The news is never the joke
Headlines are read straight. The comedy lives between the stories and belongs to the characters. Victims and private individuals are never the joke.
Open-licence everything
No cloned voices: the cast are blends of openly licensed speakers, credited. Photos are public domain or Creative Commons, credited on screen.
Disclosure. GCTV is an AI-generated news parody. The characters are fictional; their voices are synthetic; the scripts are written by a language model from real, credited reporting. Uploads and the live stream are marked as altered or synthetic content on YouTube. AI can still get things wrong: when a line looks off, the original outlet is the record.
Who runs it. GCTV is an independent production, made on one computer. Questions, corrections and complaints: @WatchGCTV.
Credits. Voices: Kokoro-82M (Apache-2.0) and Chatterbox by Resemble AI (MIT). Anchor voices blend speakers from LibriTTS-R (Koizumi et al., 2023, CC BY 4.0) and Mozilla Common Voice (CC0). Weather data from the US National Weather Service. Headlines are credited to the outlets that reported them.
Questions
What people ask
What is GCTV?
Global Central Television: a 24/7 cable news parody that streams live on YouTube. Fictional cartoon anchors read the day's real headlines, credited to the outlets that reported them, and the comedy comes from the characters between the stories. It is AI-generated satire, and says so.
Is it real news?
The headlines are real. Every number, name and quotation in a news line is checked against credited sources before it is voiced. The newsroom is fictional and the anchors' opinions are jokes. For the facts, go to the credited outlet.
Are the anchors real people?
No. Chip Hartwell, Vivian Thorne and the rest of the cast are cartoon characters. Their scripts are written by an AI language model; their voices are synthetic, built from openly licensed speech. On air they insist they are human. That is the bit.
When and where can I watch?
From Friday, October 16, 2026 at 7 PM Eastern, 24 hours a day, at youtube.com/@WatchGCTV. Clips are on X at @WatchGCTV.
What's on?
The news: The Newsroom hourly on weekdays, GCTV Weekend, Meanwhile Elsewhere and the Asia Desk. Beyond the news: The Long Table, a parody podcast, and Somebody Built This, a documentary parody about ancient wonders.
Can I use clips?
Share them with credit for commentary, criticism and personal use. Don't present GCTV as real news or strip its disclosures. Details in the terms.