Pierce Morgan’s talk show Uncensored drew an average of 317,000 viewers during its first episode on Monday, as Rupert Murdoch’s television channel beat both Sky News and BBC News over the same period.
The highly acclaimed return of the presenter to television won a 2% share of all television viewings at 20:00, with an audience peak of 397,000 as curious viewers watched the new offer but did not stay around for an hour.
The new station, backed by a huge advertising budget, was free of most of the technical issues that plagued last year’s launch of the right-wing GB News. Instead, viewers received a rather lengthy interview with former US President Donald Trump, along with a series of swear words about “awakened” policies, a culture of denial, and things you can’t say on television these days.
Under the line of “real talk starts here”, talkTV consists of three hours of new programming between 19:00 and 22:00: Morgan’s program, a news and political discussion show hosted by Tom Newton-Dunn, and a panel program presented by Sharon Osbourne. The rest of the station’s output consists of programs that use the composition of the previous talkRadio only for audio.
The initial ratings were slightly ahead of GB News’s opening night last year. Although talkTV ratings are likely to fall in the coming weeks as initial audience curiosity fades, beginning suggests that there is an audience for a channel built around Morgan’s program – which begins with a graphic of exploding 3D brains with the words “wake up madness”. “Snowflake society”, “the world has gone mad”, imposed from above.
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Media analysts at Enders Analysis said the new station’s finances were unclear. They said talkTV was “unlikely to achieve the levels of viewing needed for self-sufficiency in the medium term”, but suggested that its impact on the media could be “disproportionate to the levels of viewing”.
Analysts said the future of talkTV will be shaped in part by whether videos go viral on social media: “People like to feel part of a wider conversation and prefer it when that conversation is widely shared and influential.
The launch of talkTV poses a serious threat to GB News, which is gradually recovering from its disastrous launch, but is now facing being overwhelmed by Murdoch’s slippery, more massive rival. The viewing performance remains well below profitability, while its television ratings are supported by Nigel Farage’s evening show on weekdays, which reached 100,000 viewers.
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