PASADENA, California — Former British tabloid editor Piers Morgan says he’s spoiling for a prime-time fight with CNN’s rivals — and throw the first punch with Oprah Winfrey.
Winfrey, who is promoting her new OWN cable network, was the first interview subject when “Piers Morgan Tonight” launched last night.
Morgan replaces Larry King, whose interview show ended after 25 years last month. He joins CNN at a low ebb, after a year in which Fox News Channel and MSNBC beat the original cable news network in the prime-time ratings.
To that, Morgan said, “I’d like to get to the position … where the butt-kicking is reversed.”
He said CNN needs to be more competitive with its rivals, “much more than we have been.”
The brash Brit touted his talk show with plenty of tough talk of his own in a meeting with reporters last week, bragging that he made Simon Cowell cry during an interview and suggesting that his interview in Britain with Gordon Brown turned the tide of the election for prime minister in Brown’s favour. He said he wants to be polarizing.
“He’s really not this annoying,” said his executive producer, Jonathan Wald, suggesting his star was in promo mode and not as combative during actual interviews.
In fact, Morgan said his typical interview technique is to try and get a laugh off the top, to seal a connection between him and the subject. He also promises to knock his subject on the heels with questions they never expected.
In Winfrey’s case, that was when Morgan asked “how many times have you properly been in love?”
Wald said that through Morgan’s interviews, the show will be reaching for the “middle lane of American popular culture, the intersection of interesting and important.”
Morgan said he hoped that viewers watch the interviews and “feel exhilarated, feel excited.”
CNN says guests for the first week of “Piers Morgan Tonight” will include radio shock-jock Howard Stern, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, comedian and Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais (jur-VAYS’), and actor George Clooney. (AP)
