Why ‘Piers Morgan Tonight’ Was Cancelled
It was obvious when Larry King left the desk, someone had to take his spot on CNN. The man who seemed to be ready to take the reigns was Englishman Piers Morgan. The issue with this was, Morgan didn’t seem to do well with American crowds. It was said that Morgan routinely seemed to pass off his gun control policies to his audience. It seemed as if people were expected to believe in his words if they watched. This is why his CNN show, “Piers Morgan Tonight” was cancelled.
The inability to connect with American crowds didn’t help him either. King’s best ability was the ability to connect with the audience that watched him, so he kept ratings steady for years. While yes, they did dip a bit in his last years with the network, it’s still impressive to see his history. Really, Morgan seemed to shoot himself in the foot sadly.
Morgan, unlike King, seemed to bring in nothing but negative. Ratings were poor, and the guest interviews didn’t seem to do as much as CNN had hoped when they hired him to succeed King.
Overall, he seemed to bring his political agenda first and when it came to his job, a unbiased side was far better than a bias one. It was one reason King was good, he really focused on the story and not the political material around it. He asked tough questions, but really went after the full side, not just one to get a message across.
The assumption going in would be that Morgan would do well because he has been a journalist in the past with English papers. He has done interviews and worked on TV previously as well. He had entertainment experience, and overall, he was clearly an option for the spot, so CNN didn’t hire a scrub by any means.
Morgan’s first chance to know the American crowd was as the mean English judge on “America’s Got Talent”. Obviously we Americans need to have a villainous Englishman on our judging panels to make it complete, eh?
Piers was good as a judge on the show and even gave tremendous advice at times. Obviously he wanted to back to his journalistic routes, which is why the CNN option was so good for him. It gave him an opportunity to connect to that side that he loved so much.
The issue was, the connection with the American crowd hurt him a lot. Its not as if Englishmen cannot have a show on American TV, we’ve seen successful one’s before. It seemed that Piers however, was not the right guy for this particular job and ratings reflected that.
Now, Morgan claims that he wants to do bigger interviews in his next job…whatever that might be. He even claimed to be pleased that the show was axed. So really, did he feel uncomfortable with CNN and wanted to get fired so that he could go on to something else? It seems possible.
I am not one to accuse people of anything, but when a show is cut, usually there is tension with the people from that show against the network that cut them. It should come as no surprise that Morgan is responding the way he is. I’d expect more in the coming weeks to months down the line.
Whether or not he has another show on American TV is yet to be determined. He could very well go back to a reality competition show. I’ve heard that American Idol cycles judges out every season or two….this could be a potential destination spot.
Let’s hope Morgan can actually connect with the audience he is supposed to connect with and not bring down ratings if he is ever back on TV. There is nothing worse than a guy with channel changing heat.
