Image: Piers Morgan/Twitter
Piers Morgan has a new job, signing a deal with Rupert Murdoch for a new, global TV show that will broadcast in the UK, US and Australia – on a newly-launched News UK channel.
Having teased his next career move since departing Good Morning Britain earlier this year, details of Morgan’s new Murdoch mega-deal emerged on Thursday.
His new programme – still unnamed – will air on weeknights on Murdoch’s newly-announced TV channel, TalkTV, in the UK as well as on FOX Nation in the US and Sky News Australia. He will also present a series of True Crime documentaries.
Morgan will also publish two weekly columns, online, for the New York Post and The Sun. Publisher HarperCollins will also publish a follow-up to his best-selling book on cancel culture, Wake Up.
TalkTV will reportedly offer a mixture of “hourly news bulletins, sports and entertainment shows as well as current affairs, debate, opinion and documentaries”, Murdoch’s News UK said in a statement.
The channel will launch in early 2022, and will be available live and on-demand – with Morgan’s new show set to be the main draw.
It joins a number of existing media outlets in the News UK stable – including The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun, talkRADIO, talkSPORT and Times Radio.
Rebekah Brooks, chief executive of News UK, said: “We are committed to providing choice for television and streaming viewers and bringing the best of our journalism to the screen. Taking advantage of modern technology, we can produce high quality shows at low cost.”
Scott Taunton, CEO of News UK broadcasting promised that “talkTV will provide a rich mix of entertaining and informative shows that no other service provides.”
The announcement marks something of an about-face for News UK, after it was reported earlier this year that Brooks had got cold feet about the cost of putting a new channel on air.
She reportedly told staff in April that “while there is consumer demand for alternative news provision, the costs of running a rolling news channel are considerable, and it is our assessment that the payback for our shareholders wouldn’t be sufficient.”
TalkTV’s emergence coincides with the struggles of GB News which, this week, announced that veteran broadcaster Andrew Neil has stepped down as chair and presenter.
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