TalkTV channel shut down just weeks after Piers Morgan criticism and exit
TalkTV has been shut down as a terrestrial TV channel by News UK.
The Rupert Murdoch owned channel will be taken off air in the summer just two years after it was launched. The move comes after Piers Morgan quit TalkTV and moved his Uncensored show to YouTube permanently.
President of broadcasting for TalkTV, Scott Taunton, revealed plans to move the channel online. He reportedly told staff in a briefing: "Two years ago, we would not have been brave enough to launch a channel without a linear presence, but audiences of all ages have moved fast and smartphones are now the primary device where news is consumed. We need to adapt to this as a priority.
"We are therefore intending that Talk comes off linear television from early summer and our focus will be on streaming. Talk will continue broadcasting as a livestreaming news and opinion channel, distributing through streaming platforms to include YouTube, Amazon Fire, Samsung, LG and others," as reported by The Guardian.
Rupert Murdoch's Talk TV network is to cease broadcasting as a channel and move solely online (PA)“A large proportion of our live viewing is already through streaming on televisions and we intend to continue to grow this. Clips will continue to be shared through social media. There is no doubt over Talk’s future as an audio and video channel, it just won’t be distributed on linear. Radio on DAB continues unchanged too," the briefing added.
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Piers announced his move away from TalkTV, after being at the forefront of the channel's inception two years, last month. He likened a fixed scheduled TV show to being "an increasingly unnecessary straightjacket" as he announced the news to fans.
"There's something quite anachronistic about a show like mine still trying to create old fashioned TV for a pre-scheduled time slot each night for a relatively small audience - when we're getting such gigantic audiences digitally," Morgan told website Semafor.
The presenter explained that his interview with Rishi Sunak was "viewed by more than 50,000 people on TalkTV – but by more than five times as many on YouTube." He later told The Times: "I could happily interview Elon Musk for three or four hours tomorrow and the audience would lap it up.
"But the nightly restriction of having to go into a studio at 8pm when sometimes there is nothing happening and literally fill time? Nobody wants that." Piers revealed he looks to US online news site The Daily Wire, fronted by Ben Shapiro as an example of an online news brand.
Uncensored's YouTube channel has 2.35 million subscribers, with his recent interview with Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef about the Israel-Hamas conflict garnering 22 million views, while his chats with Andrew Tate, Kanye West and Cristiano Ronaldo garnered 14 million, 8.7 million, and 5.7 million, respectively.
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