Since Piers Morgan first announced that he'd be joining News UK's Talk TV, the channel was guaranteed to be divisive. And after launching on Monday, April 25, it's time to look at how successful the channel has been during the first few days. Unsurprisingly, viewers have followed Piers on his move to a new channel.
Uncensored, his new prime-time show averaged 317,000 viewers during its first episode on Monday and the channel, which is owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, beat both Sky News and the BBC News channel during the same timeslot. The first episode featured an iconic interview with President Donald Trump - something which garnered headlines before the channel had even aired.
Read more about said interview here: "I was cancelled by Good Morning Britain" Piers Morgan claims as he 'storms off' Lorraine
Since Talk TV was commissioned, it already had fellow 'anti-woke' station GB News to compete with. Whereas the latter was plagued with technical issues, Piers' new home was relatively error-free.
Critics were naturally divisive of Talk TV's launch. The Telegraph's Anita Singh wrote: "As launch nights go, it was a purring Rolls-Royce to GB News' spluttering Robin Reliant." Meanwhile, Mark Lawson of The Guardian compared Piers Morgan to a "Jeremy Clarkson tribute act".
Talk TV won a 2% share of all television viewing at 8pm on Monday and the audience peaked at 397,000 with curious viewers having a peek at the new offering. Unfortunately for Piers, they didn’t stay around for the full hour.
The idea for the station was first conceived in December 2020 when Ofcom first gave a license to the formally-known, News UK TV. When the cameras started rolling on GB News last year, it was all stations go on the new channel. Alongside Piers' new show, Sharon Osbourne and Jeremy Kyle (who made his first return to TV following *that* scandal) host The Talk - a panelist-look at a series of controversial topics.
Unfortunately for the pair, their first episode was met with a more mixed response. 20,000 viewers tuned in to watch The Talk. This was a huge drop as Shazza and Jezza's show averaged 44,000 viewers for its launch night on Monday.
Piers' audience also dropped on Tuesday with Uncensored viewers dropping to 200,000. Hitting back on Twitter, Piers expressed his thoughts after Tuesday's viewing figures were made public.
He wrote: ‘For proper context, you should also show the ratings for long-established BBC News & Sky News.
‘Spoiler alert, I hammered all of them.’
The battle between Piers' show and Nigel Farage's GB News alternative will no doubt be a battle for the next couple of weeks but who will ultimately come out on top?
