Piers Morgan arrives at Sky News Australia Tuesday night with his first program just hours after it has been rolled out in the UK and the US.
Sky News Australia already has one broadcaster with the initials PM dominating primetime – Paul Murray – with a show formerly known as PM Live, now called Paul Murray Live. This week the channel gets its second PM – Piers Morgan with his program Piers Morgan Uncensored.
The controversial Sky News newcomer takes his place in the Australian schedule four nights a week at 9pm.
Thanks to the tentacles of News Corp that spread around the globe, it’s been hard not to know about the new program. In Australia, News Corp newspapers and his new TV home have been carrying a heavy promotional load for the new program. Although the coverage has been modest compared to the support for Morgan in his home market.
One of today’s two Piers Morgan front pages on The Sun
In the UK, the established News Corp news brands have been doing the heavy lifting promoting both the new show and the new channel it lives on, TalkTV. Feature interviews and advertising in The Times, The Sunday Times and The Sun. Not one, but two front covers of The Sun on Monday, one an ad, the other a news story. The host has been doing interviews with seemingly just about anybody who’ll have him. Morgan even returned to ITV on the daytime show Lorraine which airs just after his former home on Good Morning Britain wraps.
News Corp uses Global to promote Uncensored on London buses
London commuters were met by a massive digital takeover from the JCDecaux screens at Waterloo station and he was on many of London’s iconic buses as part of a spend with Global.
Morgan is now the highest-paid journalist in the UK after a three-year deal with News Corp for a reputed £50m over three years. For that money, he not only delivers a daily program four times a week, but also a column for The Sun in the UK which is also being carried on the Sky News Australia website. Maybe books too for Harper Collins.
The launch in the UK sees News Corp turning on a news channel into a crowded market. The dominant player Sky News is being challenged by GB News and now TalkTV. Of the former, being run by former Sky News Australia CEO Angelos Frangopoulos, Morgan told fellow News Corp Virgin Radio broadcaster Chris Evans this week, GB News is a “so-called rival” and that the channel will “flatline” after TalkTV arrives.
When asked by Evans about the responsibility he has taken on in return for the salary, Morgan said: “I am carrying the weight of a new network. It is a significant investment by Rupert Murdoch and I don’t want to let him down.”
Piers Morgan and Rupert Murdoch in 2021
The TV host has a good relationship with the News Corp controlling shareholders. Morgan said he dined with Rupert Murdoch just last week in Los Angeles and on his recent Australian visit Morgan travelled in a private jet with Lachlan Murdoch.
Morgan is not expecting overnight success for either his show or the network. “I have a three-year deal and I think [success] will take that time,” he told Evans. “You can create a big splash around the launch…but it’s how you bed [the show] down [that will decide long-term success].”
Of his former ITV breakfast show, Morgan noted his final two episodes were the highest-ever breakfast ratings achieved by the channel. “Since I have left the ratings have halved,” he said of the program which has since used over a dozen different people to co-host.
Episode 1: Piers Morgan Uncensored
The marquee interview for the first week of the new show is the Donald Trump interview and it is being rolled out across the first two episodes.
The interview is an enthralling piece of TV and the channel could not have wished for a better piece of launch content.
The program started with a lengthy monologue from Piers Morgan outlining what his show will do – uphold freedom of speech principles. Morgan then showed some highlights of his Donald Trump interview and talked about his relationship with Trump for over 15 years, including a clip of when Trump announced Morgan as the winner of a series of The Celebrity Apprentice.
Morgan talked about someone who tried to sabotage his Trump interview by sending a dossier of details of negative Morgan quotes about the former US President. Morgan called this person a “duplicitous two-faced weasel”, showing an image of GB News host Nigel Farage.
The Trump interview got underway after 15 minutes of the program.
There were many interview highlights. While the fake walkout is getting most of the coverage, amazingly Trump claimed there would have been no deaths in Ukraine if he was still in the White House. Trump said his reaction to any attempt to invade Ukraine would have prevented Putin from sending in the troops, although Trump refused to detail what the US reaction would have been under a Trump presidency.
“People will look back on this time and be ashamed of what we haven’t done [in Ukraine],” Trump said.
“I am not right-wing,” Morgan has said more than once on the publicity tour for his new show. Indeed he quotes his relationship with Donald Trump as proof of that. He often adds “I’m a frustrated liberal.” Trump has branded Morgan, among other things, part of the “fake news media”.
The best chance any critique of the new show has of getting some traction is to perhaps savage the new program. But it’s actually very good.
Bad news generates far more clicks than positive reporting, something Morgan understands all too well.
He told Press Gazette: “I’m hoping the knives will come out quickly from all the usual suspects, and that will just create more noise. In the end, it’s a marathon, not a sprint.”
On the morning of his first program, Morgan tweeted:
The only way the PR campaign for @PiersUncensored could possibly get any better is if the @guardian review it and say it’s terrible, unwatchable & the end of civilisation as we know it. Don’t let me down you whiny woke wastrels!
The new show is not any of those things, but it’s perhaps going to have people from the right and the left trying to trash it.
See also: News Corp woos Piers Morgan: New show for Sky News Australia and Fox News