Piers Morgan is leaving TalkTV to focus on his YouTube channel, the broadcaster has revealed.
His show, Piers Morgan Uncensored has been shown at 8pm on the Rupert Murdoch owned channel for almost two years, but ratings have been lacklustre.
However, his YouTube channel has been garnering far more views, prompting the veteran journalist to decide he wants to go “full digital globally” and escape the “straightjacket” of a nightly show.
“There’s something quite anachronistic about a show like mine still trying to create old fashioned TV for a pre-scheduled time slot each night for a relatively small audience – when we’re getting such gigantic audiences digitally,” Morgan told website Semafor.
He added that his recent interview with Rishi Sunak was “viewed by more than 50,000 people on TalkTV – but by more than five times as many on YouTube.”
He later told The Times: “I could happily interview Elon Musk for three or four hours tomorrow and the audience would lap it up.
“But the nightly restriction of having to go into a studio at 8pm when sometimes there is nothing happening and literally fill time? Nobody wants that.”
Morgan, 58, cited US online news site The Daily Wire, fronted by Ben Shapiro, as an example of the kind of brand he hopes to build with “Uncensored”, which he co-owns with TalkTV, as he follows in the footsteps of other high profile TV anchors who have gone completely online, such as Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly.
Morgan’s channel on YouTube has 2.35 million subscribers with some clips raking in millions of views after going viral.
His recent interview with Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef about the Israel-Hamas conflict has had 22 million views, while his conversations with Andrew Tate, Kanye West and Cristiano Ronaldo garnered 14 million, 8.7 million, and 5.7 million, respectively.
Morgan said that the decision to leave was his own, although Murdoch is said to have also been unhappy with the show’s ratings.
He was reportedly being paid £50m over three years for his work across various News UK outlets.
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