The first episode of Piers Morgan’s new talk show averaged 317,000 viewers, with talkTV beating out rivals Sky News and BBC News during the same time slot.
Piers Morgan Uncensored debuted on Monday (25 April) night at 8pm. In the first episode, the ex-Good Morning Britain host invited former US president Donald Trump on as his first guest.
The heavily publicised interview won a two per cent share of all television viewing at the time, with audience numbers peaking at 397,000. Not all viewers, however, stayed to watch the full one-hour broadcast.
TalkTV is a new Rupert Murdoch-owned TV channel which launched that evening.
Under the tagline “straight talking starts here”, talkTV consists of three primetime programmes. In addition to Piers Morgan Uncensored, there will be a current affairs show, The News Desk, led by journalist Tom Newton Dunn at 7pm. Sharon Osbourne’s The Talk will air at 9pm (she left The Talk on CBS last year after an on-air debate about racism).
The channel will feature hourly news bulletins, sports and entertainment shows, as well as current affairs, debate, opinion, and documentaries.
Per The Guardian, the initial ratings for talkTV were only marginally ahead of the launch of GB News last year.
The first episode of Piers Morgan: Uncensored opened with a special introduction from comedian Ricky Gervais.
You can read The Independent’s one-star review of the programme’s first episode, in which TV critic Nick Hilton writes that “what ensues is a truly tortured piece of broadcasting”.
“Oscillating wildly between sycophantic and confrontational has always been Morgan’s style but Trump brings out the worst in him,” writes Hilton.
