Piers Morgan is moving his daily show “Uncensored” from television to YouTube, marking the latest transition of traditional broadcasting talent into the digital space.
Morgan has been hosting “Uncensored” on British channel TalkTV since April 2022. He explained in his penultimate televised broadcast on Thursday that the constraints of linear television no longer suited the needs of the show.
“The truth is that many millions of you are watching us on YouTube every day and across our other digital platforms,” Morgan said in the broadcast. “So much so that cutting short our big interviews and debates to squeeze them into a single hour with commercials no longer makes any real sense.”
“Piers Morgan Uncensored” will be available on YouTube starting Feb. 19. The “Uncensored” YouTube channel has amassed 2.3 million subscribers since launching in November 2021.
Morgan is the latest broadcaster to pivot to a social media-first show.
Ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson launched a show on X last year, and former CNN anchor Don Lemon was among a handful of people to recently announce their plans to launch shows on the platform. Lemon described his X show as being “bigger, bolder, freer” than his past work.
Scott Taunton, executive vice president and president of broadcasting of News UK, which owns TalkTV, called the move the “right decision” in a statement. He said it gave Morgan more freedom to “create the right content to grow his already huge global online audience.”
“More and more, audiences are consuming video news and opinion online through their phones and this evolution is set to continue,” Taunton said. “It’s also where the advertising revenues are. Creating professional quality, TV-like video that does well digitally — via streaming services and social media — will be the focus of future investment for all our brands, including Talk[TV].”
In a statement, Morgan called the scheduling and production of a daily television show an “unnecessary straitjacket.”
“PMU has always had a start-up mentality and this decision to now take ourselves fully digital reflects the reality of where our audience is and where we need to be singularly focused,” he said. “It will make perfect sense to anyone who understands the way modern media — especially TV — is going, and no sense to dinosaurs stuck in their blinkered old ways.”
Morgan’s final broadcast of “Uncensored” on TalkTV is Friday night.
