Piers Morgan will return to screens this spring with a new show as part of his £50m deal with News UK.
His new show, “Piers Morgan Uncensored”, will broadcast in the UK, US and Australia.
The announcement comes a year after Morgan walked off the Good Morning Britain set following a testy exchange with co-presenter Alex Beresford.
In the UK, the new 60-minute show will broadcast on weeknights on the yet to be launched Talk TV.
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In the US it will air on News Corp’s subscription streaming service Fox Nation, and in Australia on Sky News, which there remains part of the Murdoch empire.
News UK claims Piers Morgan Uncensored will be “the first show of its kind broadcast across three separate continents”. It said the show will air “later this spring”.
The company timed the announcement for a year to the day after Morgan walked off Good Morning Britain on 9 March 2021.
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The day before, Morgan had dismissed the Duchess of Sussex’s claims to have felt suicidal while embroiled in the royal family – an incident that drew the most complaints Ofcom has ever received about a programme. Beresford had criticised Morgan for the dismissals, saying his behaviour was “pathetic”.
Ofcom ultimately cleared Morgan of the complaints.
In a clip announcing the launch that was uploaded to Twitter, Morgan said: “A year ago today, I was forced to leave a job I loved, at the peak of its success, for having the audacity to express an honestly held opinion. This shouldn’t happen in any democracy supposedly built on the principles of free speech and freedom of expression.”
*ANNOUNCEMENT*
Trigger warning: I’m back.. and I’m uncensored.
@PiersUncensored ?? pic.twitter.com/0aq8gT7rP5— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) March 9, 2022
The new show, Morgan said, is intended “to cancel the cancel culture which has infected societies around the world. I want it to be a platform for lively vigorous debate, news-making interviews, and that increasingly taboo three-letter word: fun. I also want it to annoy all the right people.”
Morgan formally left GMB the day after his walk-off, saying at the time: “I had a good chat with ITV and we agreed to disagree…
“If I have to fall on my sword for expressing an honestly-held opinion about Meghan Markle and that diatribe of bilge that she came out with in that interview, so be it.”
For its part ITV at the time said: “Following discussions with ITV, Piers Morgan has decided now is the time to leave Good Morning Britain. ITV has accepted this decision and has nothing further to add.”
News UK has not yet identified any guests or co-hosts Uncensored might have lined up.
The show is the newest announcement for News UK’s upcoming Talk TV.
The company has previously announced that Times Radio chief political commentator Tom Newton Dunn will host a primetime weeknight show on the channel. Kate McCann, previously political correspondent at Sky News, will be TalkTV’s politics editor.
The channel will also air a daily satirical panel show.
[Read more: TalkTV briefing – Tom Newton Dunn of Times and Kate McCann of Sky are latest signings]
Press Gazette reported in January that Morgan had signed a £50m, three-year deal with Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, which would see him pen columns for The Sun and New York Post, host a show on Talk TV and publish a book with Murdoch-owned Harper Collins.
The pay packet likely makes Morgan the best-remunerated journalist in Britain.
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