Piers Morgan hired to launch Rupert Murdoch TV
station talkTV
News UK TV station will be rival to floundering GB
News and go on air early 2022
Piers Morgan and Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch said: ‘Piers is the broadcaster every
channel wants but is too afraid to hire.’
Jim
Waterson Media editor
@jimwaterson
Thu 16 Sep
2021 19.23 BST
Rupert
Murdoch’s News UK has announced plans to launch a national television station
called talkTV, which will be a rival to the floundering rightwing channel GB
News and provide a platform for the return of Piers Morgan.
In a U-turn
after similar plans were cancelled this year, News UK said it would hire
“exceptional talent” for the station. Bosses believe Morgan fits in that
category and is the biggest name to have signed up to the project.
As well as
presenting a primetime evening show, Morgan will write a column for the Sun, a
book for the Murdoch-owned HarperCollins and have his programme carried on
Murdoch-owned channels around the world. He quit Good Morning Britain in March
after refusing to apologise for comments about the mental health of the Duchess
of Sussex.
Murdoch,
who posed alongside Morgan to announce the deal, said: “Piers is the
broadcaster every channel wants but is too afraid to hire. Piers is a brilliant
presenter, a talented journalist and says what people are thinking and
feeling.”
Although
the company insists talkTV will not be a traditional rolling news channel and
will also feature entertainment, documentaries and sports programming, the
bedrock of its output is likely to come from current affairs discussions.
News UK
said talkTV would go on air early next year and be available as a stream for
smart TVs and as a traditional TV channel, with the company intending to spend
the substantial amount required to secure slots on Freeview, Freesat, Virgin
Media and Sky.
The
television channel is being built out of the company’s radio stations, which
include talkRadio, talkSport, Times Radio and Virgin Radio. They already
produce video content at relatively low cost featuring presenters and guests
talking in the studio.
In a dig at
GB News, which has endured a disastrous launch, including the departure of its
star presenter Andrew Neil, and and lacks any regular news updates, News UK
said there would be “proper hourly news bulletins” on its service.
Although
News UK did not reference talkTV’s political leaning in its launch announcement,
the video material currently produced by talkRadio may provide clues as to its
direction. The station focuses on culture war topics and last month announced a
programme counting “the biggest, daftest and most worrying examples of cancel
culture in the UK and beyond, proving that just about anyone or anything can
face the threat of being cancelled”.
The company
has already quietly launched a programming strand for smart TVs called
talkRadioTV, with material featuring the presenters Julia Hartley-Brewer, Mike
Graham, Trisha Goddard, Rob Rinder and Jeremy Kyle.
The
decision to launch a full TV channel comes just five months after the company’s
chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, cancelled plans to launch a very similar
project called News UK TV which had been under development for a year.
At the time
Brooks said the “considerable” costs of running a rolling news channel meant
such a project would be unprofitable. That decision followed months of internal
wrangling over whether to fully commit funding to News UK TV, which left the
channel struggling to hire staff and develop shows.
However,
the travails at GB News appear to have played a role in convincing Murdoch’s
company there is a gap in the market for a similar channel if the material is
produced professionally and at relatively low cost.
News UK has
been hiring big-name talent on large wages, having poached Chris Evans and
Graham Norton from the BBC. The company often ties them into “360 deals”, where
staff work across multiple News UK outlets.
The value
of Morgan’s deal has not been revealed but it involves tie-ups with almost
every outpost of Murdoch’s global media empire, helping spread the cost around
various units of the business. His talkTV show will also be shown on the US streaming
service Fox Nation and Sky News Australia. His Sun column will also appear in
the New York Post, and he will also present a series of True Crime
documentaries.
Murdoch
previously appointed Morgan to be editor of the now defunct News of the World tabloid
in 1994, when Morgan was just 29.
A year
later he became editor of the Daily Mirror, where he stayed for almost a
decade. During that time he was embroiled in the “City Slickers” share tipping
scandal and finally lost his job after unwittingly publishing fake photographs
of British soldiers in Iraq. He has since consistently denied any knowledge of
phone hacking by reporters during his tenure as editor.
Morgan’s
rants about “woke” issues and “snowflakes” while hosting Good Morning Britain
helped push the show’s ratings to record levels but he resigned after he made
comments about Meghan’s mental health and refused to apologise.
Ofcom
concluded this month that the broadcast did not breach its rules, but given
Morgan is one of the most complained about people in TV history, his new talkTV
show is likely to keep the media regulator busy.
GB News v
talkTV: how the channels compare
Advertisement
Funding
talkTV:
News UK, controlled by the multibillionaire US citizen Rupert Murdoch.
GB News:
£60m raised for three years from sources including the US media company
Discovery, Dubai-based Legatum and the Brexit-backing hedge fund boss Sir Paul
Marshall.
Star
presenters
talkTV:
Piers Morgan and a pool of staff currently employed by News UK, such as Chris
Evans.
GB News:
Nigel Farage, Nigel Farage’s former Brexit party colleagues, Alastair Stewart,
and stars of rightwing Twitter.
Key staff
talkTV:
News UK boss and former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks, broadcasting chief Scott
Taunton, and experienced TV producers such as former Good Morning Britain
staffer Winnie Dunbar.
GB News:
Increasingly isolated chief executive Angelos Frangopolous, the former boss of
Sky News Nick Pollard, and a pool of increasingly exhausted young producers.
Promotion
talkTV:
Blanket coverage across Murdoch’s other outlets, ranging from the Times to the
Sun to Virgin Radio and talkSport. Relentless tweeting by Piers Morgan (8
million followers).
GB News:
Pre-launch advertising campaign and a series of interviews by the now-departed
Andrew Neil. Relentless tweeting by Nigel Farage (1.6 million followers).
Politics
talkTV:
Likely to build on talkRadioTV’s record of covering fears about “cancel culture”
and how you can no longer criticise leftwing “woke” politics on television.
GB News:
Covering fears about “cancel culture” and how you can no longer criticise
leftwing “woke” politics on television – despite being a national television
station.
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