Piers Morgan has announced that his TalkTV show Piers Morgan Uncensored is ending as a linear format and instead will move to online-only.
The outspoken presenter has hosted the show on the Rupert Murdoch-owned channel since its launch in April 2022, with a regular 8pm timeslot of Monday to Thursday. Uncensored has also gone out on Fox Nation in the US and Sky News Australia.
However, TalkTV has struggled to make much of an impact in the ratings and has been roundly trounced in primetime by rival startup GB News, which has programmes hosted by the likes of Nigel Farage and Jacob Rees-Mogg.
Morgan's pulling power has landed him a string of high-profile interviews which have been seen by millions on YouTube, including exclusive chats with the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Kanye West, Donald Trump and Rishi Sunak.
Morgan said in a statement: "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.
"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. The question becomes, why do it?"
Scott Taunton, EVP of Broadcasting at News UK, added: "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."
Uncensored aired its last linear show on Thursday, with the programme due to return in its new digital format on YouTube on February 19. body check tags ::
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