Piers Morgan Wanted To Boot Anderson Cooper For Megyn Kelly? Former CNN Pundit Writes Tell-All Column
Piers Morgan had an extremely controversial last few months at CNN before he was canceled earlier this year, and in the months that have followed he’s continued in much the same fashion. Morgan recently joined Sean Hannity at Fox News for a surprisingly civil segment, trashed President Barack Obama and is now being publicly critical of his old network — namely saying that Anderson Cooper should have been replaced by Megyn Kelly. In a recent “advice column” for The Hollywood Reporter, Piers not only says that he suggested bringing Kelly over to CNN, but that CNN president Jeff Zucker agreed it was a good idea.
“I suggested to Jeff that Megyn Kelly would be a perfect primetime star for CNN — young, beautiful, slick, razor smart, bursting with opinions, humor and authority. I was convinced she’d give me a much better lead-in than Anderson Cooper, who for all his qualities as a reporter is stiff in a studio and gets annihilated in the ratings every night by O’Reilly. Jeff nodded and replied, ‘I tried to get her.’ Days later, it was announced Megyn was moving to Fox News primetime, where she’s been a huge hit. CNN has many good anchors, but it needs to find more of its own Megyn Kellys.”
Beyond the critique of fellow pundit Anderson and praise of Kelly, Morgan made criticisms about the “breaking news” cycle across all of the major networks. In part, Piers blamed low ratings for his other CNN pundit shows on the way that the network’s brand is seen worldwide. People come to CNN for breaking news and not much else, writes Morgan.
“CNN is a great company, rich in journalistic quality and resources. On a big story, no network can match it for the speed, breadth and accuracy of its newsgathering and analysis. But its problem — if it has one — is that its brand name is so indelibly associated with breaking news that when there isn’t any, not many people tune in to CNN.”
That’s not to say that Piers has become an ally of Fox News. When he appeared on Hannity’s program Tuesday, he made many of the same criticisms of Fox that he had made of CNN in his column. Kelly’s ratings might make an attractive swap for Cooper’s, but it appears Morgan still disagrees with a lot Fox’s politics.
“[Fox] has an audience that sticks with it, day in and day out, to hear a particular brand of journalism, which I think Fox, to its credit, does with great confidence, and verve, and great production value. You haven’t got to agree with it all — and I don’t. I often watch your show and want to shout at you myself.”
Would you swap out Anderson Cooper for Megyn Kelly like Piers Morgan suggested?
[Image via Flickr and Fox News]
