7 months ago
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In 2022, Piers Morgan’s big return to television was a gigantic flop. The previous year, Piers walked off the set of Good Morning Britain in a huffy tantrum over the Duchess of Sussex. That huffy tantrum would set off a chain reaction of hilarious failures – he was fired from GMB, he went crawling to Rupert Murdoch, who promptly gave him the TalkTV show Uncensored. Uncensored’s ratings have been in the toilet for its entire run, less than two years. Now Piers is throwing another huffy tantrum and leaving TalkTV. I have a theory about this, but here’s how the Times has reported it:
Piers Morgan is leaving the “unnecessary straitjacket” of his TalkTV show to focus on his successful Uncensored YouTube channel. His daily 8pm show was launched nearly two years ago. Morgan, 58, said that no longer having to be a “slave to the schedule” would allow him to improve the Piers Morgan Uncensored channel, which has grown to 2.3 million subscribers since 2022 and regularly attracts a worldwide audience of millions.
“It’s clear there’s a huge global demand for the content we’re making, but the commitment to a daily show at a fixed schedule, with all the editing and time sensitivities that involves, has been an increasingly unnecessary straitjacket,” he said.
Morgan pointed to the way in which his interview with Rishi Sunak, in which the prime minister appeared to accept a bet of £1,000 that his flights to Rwanda would take off before the next general election, was posted on YouTube on Monday afternoon and quickly gained 400,000 views. “Had we waited until 8pm to air it first on TalkTV, it would have been overtaken by the huge breaking news of King Charles’s cancer diagnosis,” he said.
He described Piers Morgan Uncensored, which is also owned by News UK, the owner of TalkTV and The Times, as having a “start-up mentality” and said that the change would free it up to feature longer interviews with bigger guests, supported by more clips. Some of the interviews will be shown on TalkTV as the channel juggles its schedule to replace Morgan’s show.
The American podcast host and presenter Joe Rogan, who has amassed 16 million YouTube subscribers without a traditional TV show, was cited as an inspiration for the change.
Here’s the thing – Piers is acting like he’s the first person to discover that people prefer to watch YouTube clips rather than a shouty, sweaty ham-faced moron screeching live on television. Literally every broadcaster, network and television personality knows that they need to build their YouTube channel in concert with their network/cable-television profile. It’s why all of the cable news networks are so quick to upload their best clips on YT within an hour of the airing. So, here’s my theory: Piers was fired again. If this was just about building a YouTube profile, he would have done that within the TalkTV/Uncensored universe. Instead, he has to leave TalkTV without the “Uncensored” branding or TalkTV branding. He’s building his own stand-alone thing as a last resort because the dumb bitch got fired again.
As for his YouTube channel… there are a lot of hateful idiots who buy what Piers is selling, so I imagine he will be able to build his own thing. But it will be even more of an echo chamber and, frankly, it will be even easier to ignore him in many ways. He’s being deplatformed in slow motion and it’s glorious.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
Piers Morgan at The Sun Who Cares Wins Awards at The Roundhouse in London, UK, on 19th September 2023,Image: 806593410, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Credit line: James Shaw / Avalon
Piers Morgan arrives at The Sun Who Cares Wins Awards, at The Roundhouse in London, UK, 19th September 2023.,Image: 806908521, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Piers Morgan, Credit line: © Avalon.red / Avalon
Piers Morgan departs Derek Draper’s funeral service at Church of St Mary The Virgin, Primrose Hill, London, England, UK on Friday 2 February, 2024.,Image: 842914700, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: Please credit photographer and agency when publishing as Justin Ng/UPPA/Avalon., Model Release: no, Credit line: Justin Ng / Avalon
