Piers Morgan talkshow axed by CNN after collapse in ratings
CNN has confirmed it is pulling the plug on Piers Morgan, as falling ratings finally took their toll on a transatlantic talk show experiment that failed to connect with American primetime audiences.
Three years after the former Daily Mirror editor – famed in London for bouncing back from a series of scandals – took over from US broadcasting veteran Larry King, Morgan was told by CNN president Jeff Zucker it “was time for the show to end”.
A spokeswoman for the US network said recent disclosures that British police had interviewed Morgan over phone-hacking allegations were not a factor in his dismissal.
“The decision had nothing to do with the hacking interview – not at all,” said CNN’s Allison Gollust, who said the date of the final episode of Piers Morgan Live had yet to be determined.
Morgan, who lost his job at the Daily Mirror after publishing fake pictures of alleged British troop misconduct in Iraq, had built a reputation for campaigns on gun control while at CNN but was blamed for a steady slide in the show’s ratings since Larry King’s retirement.
“It’s been a painful period and lately we have taken a bath in the ratings,” Morgan told the New York Times, which first broke news of the CNN decision on Sunday.
“Look, I am a British guy debating American cultural issues, including guns, which has been very polarizing, and there is no doubt that there are many in the audience who are tired of me banging on about it.”
“That’s run its course and Jeff and I have been talking for some time about different ways of using me.”
Morgan has struggled to match the ratings regularly achieved by his predecessor and had recently started to suffer new lows in terms of audience figures. This month saw six of the show’s smallest 10 audiences since he took over in January 2011.
A broadcast on 18 February, which included coverage of Ukraine’s dramatic political crisis and an interview with the former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, drew its second smallest audience to date among adults aged 25-54 (50,000). Analysts Nielsen reported that the show also drew just 270,000 total viewers, its ninth smallest gathering at that time.
David Carr, the New York Times journalist who revealed that Piers Morgan Live would be ending, wrote that it had been “an unhappy collision between a British television personality who refuses to assimilate – the only football he cares about is round and his lectures on guns were rife with contempt – and a CNN audience that is intrinsically provincial”.
It emerged this month that Morgan had been questioned under caution by Scotland Yard detectives investigating phone-hacking.
In a statement to the Guardian through his spokesperson, Morgan said that he was asked to attend an interview in early November by officers from Operation Weeting when he was next in the UK.
“This was further to a full witness statement I had already freely provided. I attended that interview as requested on 6 December 2013.”
www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/24/pi...w-axe-cnn?CMP=twt_gu
Great news. I hate this smarmy shit.
