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Piers Morgan leaving TalkTV to focus on YouTube channel

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TalkTV has lost its star presenter after Piers Morgan announced he was taking his nightly show to YouTube.

“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,” said Morgan in a statement released to Broadband TV News by News UK.

“It’s become demonstrably obvious that people want to watch PMU on myriad digital platforms at a time of their choosing, and we  have an increasingly strong digital firepower with which to promote and further disseminate our stuff across the globe, from my own 8.7 million Twitter (X) followers and 2.1 million Instagram followers to PMU’s 1.7 million TikTok followers.”

Morgan gave the example of Monday’s interview with prime minister Rishi Sunak, which premiered on YouTube at 2pm on Monday and has so far had over 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. Instead, we simply taped a new show on the royal story which itself then generated over a million views on YouTube, dwarfing the linear ratings,” he said.
The launch episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored at TalkTV’s launch in April 2022, secured an audience of 588,000 across two screenings, but the channel has subsequently struggled against its rival in right-wing talk GB News albeit without the Ofcom complaints.

Morgan co-owns Piers Morgan Uncensored with News Corp, which also carries the programme on Sky News Australia and Fox Nation, a sister channel to Fox News.

Scott Taunton, EVP President of Broadcasting, News UK, said: “Piers Morgan Uncensored’s newsmaking interviews and debates are attracting millions of views online. It is the right decision for PMU to go digital-first, freeing him from a scheduled show so he can create the right content to grow his already huge global online audience.

“More and more, audiences are consuming video news and opinion online through their phones and this evolution is set to continue. It’s also where the advertising revenues are. Creating professional quality, TV-like video that does well digitally – via streaming services and social media – will be the focus of future investment for all our brands, including Talk.”

With the final live episode screened on Thursday, TalkTV will now look to re-arrange its schedules without the man who fronted its launch campaign.

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