PIERS PLAN
Piers Morgan reveals he is going all in on digital to expand his global audience
Presenter reveals reason for shake-up as he vows to provide even bigger guests
PIERS Morgan is going all in on YouTube as he looks to expand his global audience even further.
The Sun columnist has presented Piers Morgan Uncensored on TalkTV for nearly two years - interviewing a string of huge names including Cristiano Ronaldo and Rishi Sunak.
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Piers is now planning to focus on his 2.3million YouTube subscribers - vowing to provide more explosive interviews with bigger names on a digital platform instead.
He said sticking to a rigorous TV schedule has been an "increasingly unnecessary straitjacket" as his show is sometimes overshadowed by breaking news.
Piers highlighted his interview with the Prime Minister, which was viewed by hundreds of thousands of people on YouTube when it dropped at 2pm on Monday.
The scheduled TalkTV time of 8pm meant the agenda-setting political chat would have been overtaken by King Charles' cancer announcement.
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This led Piers to record a new show on the royals, which in itself garnered over a million views on YouTube.
Piers also pointed out the success of his bombshell Ronaldo interview, which has received 6million views online since November - while 350,000 watched it on TalkTV.
Piers explained: "Piers Morgan Uncensored is the fastest-growing news/opinion/current affairs show in the world, but the vast majority of our audience is on our YouTube channel which has seen explosive growth in the past year with 2.3 million subscribers and many millions of views for our big interviews and debates.
"This, in turn, has generated increasingly strong revenue, making the business case for this digital-first pivot not just compelling but imperative.
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“It's clear there's a huge global demand for the content we’re making, but the commitment to a daily show at a fixed schedule, with all the editing and time sensitivities that involves, has been an increasingly unnecessary straitjacket.
“It’s become demonstrably obvious that people want to watch PMU on myriad digital platforms at a time of their choosing, and we have an increasingly strong digital firepower with which to promote and further disseminate our stuff across the globe, from my own 8.7 million Twitter (X) followers and 2.1 million Instagram followers to PMU’s 1.7million TikTok followers."
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Piers reflected on his successful talk show as having a "start-up mentality” as he vowed the change-up would allow for longer interviews with even bigger guests.
Some of these massive chats will shown on TalkTV as the channel juggles its schedule to replace the show.
Piers vowed: “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.
"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.
“One thing won’t change though: I’ll keep it uncensored!”
Piers Morgan Uncensored was the sixth biggest English-language news channel on YouTube ranked by average number of views in October.
The channel's average views is 420,000, which dwarfs the BBC News' 255,000.
Scott Taunton, EVP President of Broadcasting, News UK, said:
“Piers Morgan Uncensored’s newsmaking interviews and debates are attracting millions of views online.
"It is the right decision for PMU to go digital-first, freeing him from a scheduled show so he can 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. It’s also where the advertising revenues are.
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"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.”
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