Piers Morgan has announced he is quitting his daily evening show on TalkTV to focus on his YouTube channel.
The 58-year-old said he was moving his 8pm show, launched less than two years ago, onto YouTube to avoid the “ increasingly unnecessary straitjacket” of fixed TV schedules.
He told The Times: “It’s clear there’s a huge global demand for the content we’re making.”
He added: “The commitment to a daily show at a fixed schedule… has been an increasingly unnecessary straitjacket.”
Referencing his recent interview with Rishi Sunak, where he challenged the prime minister to a £1,000 bet on the fate of his Rwanda plan, he told the paper: “Had we waited until 8pm to air it first on TalkTV it would have been overtaken by the breaking news of King Charles’s cancer diagnosis.”
He also criticised the owners of TalkTV as having a “start-up mentality” and added that the switch to YouTube would allow longer interviews with bigger names.
The Piers Morgan Uncensored YouTube channel has built up a huge audience of 2.35 million subscribers since 2022, and his high-profile interview with the prime minister quickly gained nearly 400,000 views since being posted on Monday.
In his interview with The Times, he cited American podcast host Joe Rogan as a motivation for the change.
“People are watching the content on YouTube rather than conventional television and I have no problem with that,” Morgan told the paper. “You can’t defy audiences or tell them how they should be consuming.”
Uncensored launched in 2022 with an “explosive” interview with its first guest, former American president Donald Trump, and formed part of the primetime launch of TalkTV, a venture from News UK which publishes The Times and The Sun.
Other headline-making interviews from Morgan include the November 2022 sit-down with Portuguese footballer Cristiano Ronaldo, the full version of which has had nearly six million views.
The sports star opened up about the death of his newborn son, telling Morgan it was “the most difficult moment that I have had in my life”.
His move to TalkTV was catalysed as Morgan made headlines in 2021, after leaving ITV breakfast show Good Morning Britain following an on-air clash with weather presenter Alex Beresford over the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Morgan said he did not believe Meghan’s claims from the headline-making special, with his comments sparking more than 50,000 complaints, the most in Ofcom’s history.
The watchdog later ruled Good Morning Britain was not in breach of the broadcasting code over Morgan’s comments.
Morgan told news website Semafor of the move to YouTube: “The frustration for me has been continuing to create a TV-format show when that’s not how 95% of my audience is watching it.”
Some interviews will still be shown on TalkTV while a replacement in the schedules is found, The Times reported.
