It’s a difficult end to the week for Piers. After being sacked from TalkTV, his overseeing of phone-hacking past continues to haunt him. The Mirror Group Newspapers v Prince Harry hacking case has been settled, and MGN has accepted that they will pay the Duke of Sussex £400,000 in damages. Prince Harry’s barrister, David Sherborne, read a statement on Harry’s behalf hitting out at Piers Morgan and his role “who as editor, knew perfectly well what was going on, as the judge held”, pointing to Piers’ “contempt for the court’s ruling and his continued attacks” demonstrating the importance of clear and detailed judgement. He goes on:

Sherborne calls for Piers’ prosecution, and that “no one is above the law“. He warned that the “mission” over how the press operate isn’t over. Prosecuting Piers would boost his ratings…

Don’t believe the spin, just 2 years into his 3 year deal with Rupert Murdoch and with no sign of it working, Piers is out of TalkTV. Spin from him that he is shifting the show to YouTube to escape the “unnecessary straitjacket” and no longer having to be a “slave to the schedule” are face-saving lines. He had a prime-time slot and he failed to win an audience despite all the hype from the Sun and Times plus the unprecedented promotional marketing budget. Guido has it on good authority that in New York it was Rupert Murdoch himself that pulled the trigger on Morgan.

TalkTV is being pared back, the single biggest budget line item was Piers and he wasn’t delivering an audience to match his ego. The dream of a global Piers show broadcast in London, going out in Australia and the US simply didn’t work. Fox News didn’t want to touch Piers. Australian viewers didn’t care for the frequent British Z-list guests. The big name interviews that would pull audiences in all those markets were too few and far between. The show was at first downsized and after 2 years of mostly losing to Nigel Farage on GB News, dropped.

Piers is putting the best spin on it that he can, that he is excited for his YouTube “start-up”, however the economics of YouTube will not work for his show. He boasts about his 2.3 million YouTube subscribers and that his interview with Ronaldo was watched six million times. Take a look at how his last 5 shows performed on YouTube:

Piers Morgan Uncensored most nights gets only tens of thousands of online views for his show, some extracted short clips are more likely to get hundreds of thousands of views if they go viral on social media – which doesn’t really translate into revenue. Guido can remember getting hundreds of thousands of views when our clip of Gordon Brown picking his nose went viral. To get those short clips he first needs an expensive hour long show from which to extract a short “money shot” that might go viral. The fact of the matter is that the economics of YouTube won’t support the show budgets he is used to working with. YouTube pays between $1 to $10 per thousand views. Ali Abdaal, one of the most successful British YouTubers with 5 million subscribers, says last year he made $596,460 averaging at about $8 per thousand views. Which would mean Piers, with half as many subscribers, could look to make from his most successful interview ever some $48,000. Not enough to cover the costs of production for that interview alone.

In reality Piers will likely do some sporadic interviews, maybe he’ll get someone like Zelensky on his YouTube channel. Morgan will eventually lose interest without the bumper pay packet, the News UK staff will disappear and the online channel will gather pixel dust. As for TalkTV, expect his crony Richard Wallace to go, Sun TV will get an outing and the station will go back to something more like its Talk Radio roots. As entertaining as Piers is, he’ll be back somewhere, like a bad penny.

Sunak is getting flak all round for his £1,000 bet with Piers Morgan on getting a Rwanda flight off the ground prior to the election. Labour called it “totally out of touch” and the SNP is claiming Sunak violated the ministerial code with the bet. This flutter might be just the incentive Sunak needs to get flights going…

Rishi appeared this morning on Radio 5 Live and told host Rachel Burden:

“If I’m being totally honest I’m not a betting person, I was taken by surprise in that interview. I was trying to get across about the Rwanda policy, about illegal migration… I was taken totally by surprise“.

Burden pointed out the cash is more than the three cost of living payments combined. If Guido’s maths is correct a crisp £1,000 is about 0.00014% of his household’s net worth, which when compared to the UK average salary of £33,402 leaves Sunak’s bet equivalent to a little under a fiver. Piers should try £100,000…

Piers Morgan versus the Prime Minister has aired and it’s an entertaining watch. After admitting that his children don’t think it’s “cool” to have him as their dad, Sunak tried to show how confident he was with his Rwanda plan that he shook on a £1,000 bet with Piers that he’d get flights off the ground by the election. Chump change…

Whilst he tried to assure the public that his “stop the boats” priority will be achieved, he admitted that his government has failed on the one of the other pledges: cutting NHS waiting lists. Last month, he told Laura Kuenssberg that measures he’s put in place will see a reduction in waiting times by spring. Now it seems he’s accepted defeat… 

UPDATE:  Labour have jumped on the bet;

“Not a lot of people facing rising mortgages, bills and food prices are casually dropping £1,000 bets. It just shows that Rishi Sunak is totally out of touch with working people.”

After another eventful week in the media malestrom Guido is reminded that this isn’t the first time shaggability or otherwise of someone has been recently discussed on start-up broadcaster. The pop star in question being Sam Smith. That said, it was on TalkTV, so the perpetually offended woke might have missed it.