Rupert Murdoch has made countless shrewd media investments during his long lifetime, but pouring millions into Piers Morgan’s television career was not one of them.
Piers Morgan Uncensored was conceived as the flagship show for Murdoch’s TalkTV enterprise in 2022, boasting an exclusive interview with Donald Trump. When the television project was canned last year and made online-only, it had cost a reported £90m (much of that Piers’s salary).
This January, Morgan announced that he bought the Uncensored brand from News UK and would turn the YouTube channel into his own “standalone business”.
Now he is back on UK television after cutting a deal with Channel 5 to screen a 90-minute Friday night show of the week’s Uncensored highlights. It means that an idea underwritten by Rupert has become an asset for the Murdochs’ new dynastic rivals in the global media industry: the Ellisons.
As chairman and co-founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison rivals Elon Musk for the title of world’s richest human. He has used his $393bn fortune to build a media empire.
In August, the family’s Skydance Media business, led by Larry’s son David, bought the Paramount conglomerate, giving it ownership of CBS, MTV – and Channel 5.
Such is the Ellison dynasty’s ambition to dominate media that it is poised to bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, parent of CNN and owner of film studios, production companies and sports rights in the UK. The family is eyeing acquisition of TikTok in America.
So having Piers on board at Channel 5 is intriguing. Morgan is not the best journalist in the UK, but he is the best known. Uncensored did not work out for Rupert, but it is by many metrics a phenomenal success, racking up a billion views and over 4 million subscribers on YouTube, causing Morgan to joke that he is “the Justin Bieber of journalism”.
The Alphabet-owned network is replacing TV as a visual entertainment source and news outlets are desperate to understand what works on the platform. Uncensored’s scale on YouTube gives him a unique opportunity to shape the future of journalism.
Uncensored viewers are accustomed to the celebrity presenter’s insistence that he is “a journalist”, only interested in “the facts”, while his guests argue. Morgan has previously said he often invites guests he disagrees with so he can challenge them.
Yet Uncensored – a show that feeds off the fury of social media – is not a conventional news format. Neither is Morgan the impartial arbiter of truth that he identifies as.
Because culture wars are at the core of Uncensored, and Piers has taken a position in the “woke” debate, his show’s very name, Uncensored, represents his mission “to cancel the cancel culture”. His new book is titled Woke Is Dead.His “cancel culture” stance is reflected in his choice of guests.
Tucker Carlson, deemed too iconoclastic to present on Fox News, was on Uncensored last month, denouncing the official version of 9-11 as “a complete lie”.
Last week the “manosphere” influencer Andrew Tate – facing 21 charges – including rape and human trafficking – was Morgan’s guest (having also been on days earlier).
“You and I have been speaking for a long time – we are old friends,” Tate told the host, before claiming that his accusers were lying and he would be exonerated, as he has been of some other charges.
The historian Tessa Dunlop, another guest, questioned Morgan on why he had platformed Tate, and told the host: “I’ve never heard you give so much space to an individual.” She asked if Tate was his friend, and Morgan protested: “I’ve never met Andrew Tate socially in my entire life.”
I don’t believe the Ellisons would dislike Morgan’s approach, even if they were uninvolved in his recruitment. Larry and Piers are both admirers of Trump.Last week, Bari Weiss, a fierce opponent of “woke” attitudes, was named editor-in-chief of CBS News, former home of legendary American journalist Walter Cronkite. Weiss previously attracted funding from GB News co-owner Sir Paul Marshall.
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It’s early days for Channel 5 and Morgan. He retains editorial control and the TV show is curated for a UK audience.
His sign-off deal with News UK gives the Murdoch company a share of ad revenues from his YouTube channel for four more years.
Channel 5 already has news presenters Jeremy Vine and Dan Walker on its roster, but the presence of Morgan is a huge coup. Uncensored is a high-octane watch and the host’s capacity for booking stellar guests is beyond the dreams of other British news shows.
Under Paramount and the Ellisons, we can expect Morgan’s British TV profile to grow.
“We are actively looking at how a live version [of Uncensored] would work,” says Federico Ruiz, Channel 5’s commissioning editor. “The fact that we have got Piers is a really big deal.”
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