Welcome To Zelo Street!

This is a blog of liberal stance and independent mind

Friday 9 February 2024

So Farewell Then Piers Morgan

One almost feels sorry for Creepy Uncle Rupe and his UK deputy, the twinkle toed yet domestically combative Rebekah Brooks, at their vain attempts to emulate Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) in Britain. Not only is the potential audience unsustainably small, but their entrant TalkTV has competition for the attention of conspiracy theorising wackos from Gammon Broadcasting™ News (“Bacon’s News Channel”).

And what's more, Ron ...

So when Rupe cut a deal for the services of former Screws and Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan, reputedly for around 50 million Dollars, Sterling or Euro (whatever the currency unit concerned, he overpaid, and then some), it was the highest of high risk scenarios. Or he just sprayed his dosh up the wall.

The result of this deal was yet another iteration of The All New Percy Moron Show, the format tried previously on CNN with a measure of success not unadjacent to zero. Morgan took over Larry King’s 2000 hours Eastern slot and the ratings, after a few days’ improvement, just carried on down the pan.

CNN tolerated Morgan for just over three years before cancelling his show; the Murdoch mafiosi have now demonstrated that their patience does not extend as far. As the Guardian has now reported, “Piers Morgan has announced he is leaving his TalkTV daily evening show, less than two years after its launch, to focus on his YouTube channel”. Then came the excuses.

The Piers Morgan Uncensored channel has grown to 2.3 million subscribers since 2022 … He described the channel as having a ‘startup mentality’ and said the change would allow for longer interviews with bigger guests supported by more clips. Some of the interviews will be shown on TalkTV”.

Do go on. “Morgan, 58, said: ‘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 … People are watching the content on YouTube rather than conventional television and I have no problem with that … You can’t defy audiences or tell them how they should be consuming’”.

There was more of this self-justification. “I could happily interview Elon Musk for three or four hours tomorrow and the audience would lap it up [this audience is strong on masochism, then]. 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. The question becomes, why do it?” If only this excuse had been dreamed up before the show aired, eh?

The reality is that Morgan’s TalkTV show has lasted less than two years before being pulled from the schedule. Its ratings have been lamentably bad. TalkTV gets rather better value for money from flap-mouthed bigot Julia Hartley Dooda and its resident Tub Of Lard impressionist Mike Graham. Meanwhile, the channel, and GB News, are shipping money at a rate somewhere beyond alarming. Why this should be is not hard to figure out.

Fox News manages a decent audience, but across the whole of the USA, a country with around 335 million inhabitants. The UK has 67 million, or one-fifth of the US total. And the British version of Fox News was late enough to the party for GB News to become established first. It ain’t rocket science.

This organisation does not tolerate failure. I have decided on the appropriate action

The perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog are claiming that it is most likely Rupert Murdoch personally pulled the plug on Morgan’s TalkTV show. As the deal was for three years, presumably Morgan will be able to spend more than a year doing nothing and still be paid millions of currency units for doing so. Nice work if you can get it.

More time for The Great Man to blag a table at the Chiltern Firehouse, or wherever One Has To Go To Be Seen Alongside Genuinely Famous People nowadays. More time for him to reflect on the bridges burnt at the Mirror and ITV Good Morning Britain. And more time for him to know that accusations of involvement in illegal information gathering lap ever closer to his shore.

Piers Morgan was for a time, but not for all time. Just rejoice at that news.


Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by becoming a Patron on Patreon at

https://www.patreon.com/Timfenton

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

The beauty of having your own YT channel is the freedom from having to conform with OFCOM.

Anonymous said...

Morgan also just taken a kicking in Court so the Met may be found to ask a few questions about his Leveson appearance.

gillette said...

If he was paid in bottle tops it would be too much

Anonymous said...

It has been a long, slow, painful slog.....but, aided by the internet, the usual broadcast and press "news" format is as gradually doomed as the Murdoch Scum tits-tips-shouty fascism of Kelvin MacFilth, or, god help us, Springer Tabloid TV insanity.

Talking heads close controlled by the Voice-In-The-Ear and teleprompter now look like the hapless bought-and-paid-for glove puppets they are. Only gullible idiots believe a word they say.

Hence the increasing desperation to introduce self-styled "charismatic characters" like Moron. It's rates chasing hysteria on steroids, rats eating their own tails. Substance and truth nowhere to be seen. A logical product of the deeply reactionary far right "culture" inflicted by Oligarch Britain.

Expect it to get worse before it gets better.

Mr Larrington said...

Whether he jumped or was pushed, the colossal bellend will likely be claiming to have been “cancelled” by this time next week.

Anonymous said...

I'd cancel him if I was in a position to do it. Then I'd laugh in his face when I did it.

The tedious divvy.