The outspoken broadcaster took offense to reports about the fall in popularity of the flagship show on Murdoch’s TalkTV.
After attracting an average of 317,000 viewers on its launch night on April 25, Piers Morgan’s ‘Uncensored’ evening show on Rupert Murdoch’s new TalkTV channel has plummeted in popularity to an audience of just 62,000, one week later.
The debut programme, which opened with an image of an exploding 3D brain accompanied with the words “woke insanity”, “snowflake society” and “the world’s gone mad”, featured a pre-recorded interview with former US president Donald Trump.
A ‘tortured piece of broadcasting’
Described as a “truly tortured piece of broadcasting”, the interview saw Trump’s strong dislike for Meghan Markle revealed and Morgan – somewhat predictably – announce he’s “gonna cancel cancel-culture.”
Bringing more humiliation for Morgan – who is reported to be on a £50m three-year deal with TalkTV and the Sun – Trump hit out at the British TV host during a “Save America” rally in Nebraska, saying he did the presenter a favour by agreeing to sit down with him for an interview.
“This crazy Piers Morgan did you see that show? Piers Morgan thank you, sir. Did you see Piers Morgan? I think he sorta had it. I think Piers is over the hill,” Trump said.
“He opened the show with an interview of me, I did him a favour. I didn’t want to do his stupid show. It’s on Fox Nation. What is Fox Nation?”
Noting the sharp drop in ratings, Trump had yet more to say about the show, adding: “He opened with great ratings when he did me and after my interview is finished he bombed and he is now down over 70 per cent and maybe they’ll someday learn that, maybe they should hire me as an anchor.”
A “ludicrous bunch of kale-munching, sandal-clad, woke whiny wastrels”
Seeming to take offense to a report in the Guardian about the embarrassing 80% fall in viewing figures of the flagship show on Murdoch’s channel, Morgan hit out at the newspaper, tweeting:
“Being lectured by the @guardian about popularity is like being called talentless by Kim Kardashian. Worry about your own crumbling sales, dwindling finances and increasing irrelevance, you ludicrous bunch of kale-munching, sandal-clad, woke whiny wastrels.”
Morgan’s tantrum on Twitter continued when he told followers that TV ratings should be ignored, saying: “Linear TV increasingly irrelevant to total eyeball potential for a global show like this, especially with younger viewers who don’t really watch TV anymore.”
The message contradicted a separate tweet when the broadcaster bragged about his Piers Uncensored ratings.
“Lots of Guardian readers are getting very excited by my @PiersUncensored ratings, and so they should be! It’s amazing that we were the No1 news show in Britain at 8 – 9pm last night, beating BBC News, Sky News and GB News,” said Morgan.
In further bad news for TalkTV, its political programme The News Desk, attracted an audience so small this week that it wasn’t able to register a single viewer for the first half of the programme.
Figures from the Broadcasters’ Audience Research Board (BARB), show that the hour-long show hosted by Tom Newton Dunn, dropped to zero figures for half of its Tuesday evening broadcast.
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is a contributing editor to Left Foot Forward
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