It looks like TalkTV executives have wasted no time cutting overheads after Guido revealed the channel was shifting off broadcast linear TV to become an online live streamer and DAB radio station. Guido hears mass layoffs took place yesterday with two-thirds of the staff let go. So much for the bright streaming digital future. One fell swoop.
The channel’s schedule is being taken apart as the operation returns to its TalkRadio roots. The remaining staff received texts yesterday telling them they are being moved back up from the expansive 10th floor of the Baby Shard to the significantly cosier 17th floor. Meanwhile, old TalkRadio veterans are keeping hold of their casual contracts. As Guido has pointed out, YouTube won’t pay the bills, and currently the live channel has just over a pitiful thousand viewers. It’s back to square one…
UPDATE: A return to radio format would mean enforcement of the no more than “two hosts and one guest” rule.
As Guido predicted – sources say that TalkTV is shifting off broadcast linear TV, and will be an online live streamer only instead. They will continue to “stream news and opinion channel, distributing through streaming platforms to include YouTube, Amazon Fire, Samsung, LG and others.” Meaning they’ll no longer have their own television channel…
Guido hears that staff will be redeployed to other parts of the business from May, with the operation planning on rebranding the news studios which will make content for all News UK’s brands such as The Sun and The Times. They’re all YouTubers now…
UPDATE: Currently the YouTube live channel has less than a thousand viewers.
UPDATE: Read in full the email announcement from Scott Taunton spinning the shutdown as a shift to YouTube:
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.
Farage was getting a lot of attention today at the PopCon launch. Despite attending as a GB News presenter, it was himself who was being interviewed rather than the other way around. Speaking to TalkTV, he said it is “not his intention” to stand for Reform UK, though to keep people guessing a little longer, he caveated “but who knows?”. Though it doesn’t look like he’ll stand for the Tories either. He went on to say that there’s “no way Reform will do any deal with the Conservatives” as “we and many millions of others feel betrayed by them”. He later pointed out to Guido that the Tories ought to be careful as everyone will just vote Reform at the next election…
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.”
New Radio Joint Audience Research (RAJAR) figures for Q4 2023, now released, make for interesting reading. GB Radio is up 32,000 listeners to 430,000. TalkRadio is also up as BBC listening figures stagnate and the BBC’s local radio stations see a whopping 10% decline from Q3 to Q4. GB News’ combined TV and radio output still comfortably beats TalkTV’s…
Over at LBC Nick Ferrari has overtaken James O’Brien’s listening figures and to take the throne at the station, gaining 45,000 listeners in the last quarter. That’s 35,000 ahead of O’Brien, who is steadily losing listeners…
