Over the past year, as CNN has revamped its primetime lineup in an attempt to turn around its sinking ratings, the network’s fierce insistence that it would remain non-partisan has been widely regarded as a nobly doomed journey down the journalistic high road.

But the announcement Wednesday that Piers Morgan would be taking over for Larry King marks a new approach for CNN in its competition with MSNBC and Fox: trying the non-partisan low road, in a populist and tabloid-flavored appeal to a broader audience than normally tunes in for cable primetime.
Morgan, a longtime British tabloid editor whose top video on YouTube shows him interviewing Paris Hilton in bed, defended CNN's "ethos of nonpartisanship" in a call to journalists Wednesday, and was not shy about lashing out at his new primetime competitors’ lack of it.

“I have a lot of opinions about politics, religion, everything,” he said. “Do I want to shove that down my viewers throats? No. There are enough people doing that at 8 o’clock or 9 o’clock. I find it a bit self-indulgent.”

Instead, Morgan plans to bring the kind of fearless - and shameless - interviewing style that has made his long-form interview show in the U.K., “Piers Morgan Life Stories,” the country’s top-rated interview show. (In his most famous interview, with then-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, he asked: “It was the era of free love. How free was your love?”)

In this way, he is very much continuing King’s legacy, albeit with a reputation for more curveballs than softballs.

But as a Brit whose time in the U.S. has been mostly spent appearing on the reality show “America’s Got Talent,” it remains to be seen whether he will be able to attract the political guests and make the kind of news that King did.

“He has charmed British audiences, and he’s charmed network audiences,” said Tammy Haddad, the founding executive producer for “Larry King Live.” “The question is, will he be able to win over cable news audiences?”

One thing that will help is timing. King’s farewell show will be December 16th, and Morgan will start his yet-to-be-named show in January, steering him clear of the midterm elections and giving him plenty of prep time.

“The mere fact that they are waiting until January means they are working on giving him a good launch,” Haddad said. “That’s the time when people’s eyes go back to the other coast, toward the Oscars, and away from Washington.”

But CNN is also clearly banking on Morgan’s ability to attract audiences who could care less about Washington and politics. Rumors of Morgan’s getting the job swirled for three months in part because CNN and NBC had to hammer out a deal to share Morgan, who draws top summer ratings as a reality show judge.

Morgan’s network following could prove to be a boon for his new cable bosses, and he vowed Wednesday to go after new audiences that don’t even watch television.
“I’ve not joined to come in second, third or fourth,” he said. “I like to come in first. However long that takes, that’s the game plan.”

A large part of his success will depend on the fate of his lead-in, the newly named “Parker Spitzer” show at 8 p.m., which debuts in October. Campbell Brown, who previously held the slot, stepped down earlier this year, saying she just could not compete in the ratings game.

Continue Reading
Text Size
-+reset Listen
But while Morgan’s other job might help CNN, his baggage from his previous jobs might not.

Throughout his career as a British tabloid editor he courted controversy and racked up some notable enemies. In 2002, Cherie Blair, wife of another former prime minister, called him "a man with no moral compass." (Morgan told journalists Wednesday that she’d be on a list of banned guests, along with Heather Mills McCartney.)

As editor of The Daily Mirror, Morgan was found to have bought shares in a technology company shortly before the company was tipped by his paper's financial columnists. While the writers had to leave the Mirror, Morgan stayed on.

In 2004, under his editorship, the Mirror printed photographs depicting British soldiers abusing an Iraqi prisoner. Morgan was fired when it came out that the photos were a hoax - but Morgan maintains to this day that he never believed them to be forged, and still does not know of their source.

More ominous perhaps for his upcoming role, is his hotheaded history with talk shows.

British broadcaster Ian Hislop and presenter Clive Anderson both, while on air, charged Morgan with having photographers and reporters follow and spy on them. Morgan's response? He told Anderson that the photographers would be better hidden next time, and, referring to Hislop, asked the live audience:"Does anyone actually like him?"

In 2004, British TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson publicly punched Morgan three times at the British Press Awards for the Mirror's prying into his private life.

Last year Morgan even told The Guardian newspaper, "I like waging feuds."

But even those who consider him a “tabloid scumbag,” as one profiler in the UK’s Observer did in 2008, still find him irresistible.
“There is absolutely no good reason on this planet to like Piers Morgan,” the Observer’s Polly Vernon wrote. “His crimes are manifold. He's a show-off and a hypocrite and he's obsessed by celebrity and the benefits it can bring him. He thinks the whole of Fleet Street is jealous of him, because he's renounced the legitimacy of journalism for the bright lights and easy cash of populist telly.

“Problem is, I do. Morgan's entirely likeable. He is arrogant, he is pompous, he is pleased with himself; but he also knows how absurd his life is, how quickly and completely this could evaporate.”

Continue Reading
Text Size
-+reset Listen
Whether American cable audiences will have the same response is a matter of critical importance to CNN. Morgan’s placement marks the last big move in CNN/U.S. President Jon Klein’s revamping of the network’s primetime lineup, and Klein’s fortunes will be made or broken on Morgan’s performance.

Klein, who on Wednesday called the choice of Morgan “the most natural thing in the world,” brushed off questions about what was at stake for him or the network.

“The stakes are for the audiences, which deserve hard hitting, tough questioning and having officials held accountable. And that’s what we are focused on doing.”

One former CNN correspondent who didn’t want to be named was dismayed by the choice.

“It’s disappointing to see CNN slide further into the dubious business of tabloid journalism. CNN still has serious journalists doing first-rate reporting, like Candy Crowley for instance, but an increasing percentage of its air time is taken up by show hosts who are interested in provoking outrage, than providing context.”

But Frank Sesno, the former CNN correspondent who filled in for King in the 1990s, thinks Morgan might work.

“I think CNN needs a new voice in primetime. He’s going to be a new voice, and literally, with a new accent. He’s had a very interesting and unconventional background for this kind of thing that just may give a perspective and an edit and approach that’s different. And what CNN has to do it if it’s going to rejuvenate and reinvent itself, is it has to be true to its brand while being imaginative and creative enough to be different.”

Morgan said his interview wish list would start with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, the organizer behind the mosque and community center near ground zero (who CNN already landed on Wednesday), and go on to include Mel Gibson, President Barack Obama and Lindsay Lohan.

Displaying his taste for mischief, he quipped that he’s “still planning a Glenn Beck-style rally in Central Park next summer and that he was “going for a million people to show up,” though he wasn't quite sure yet what it would be about.