CNN President Jeff Zucker has decided to bring an end to Piers Morgan’s low-rated primetime show, network sources told POLITICO on Sunday. “Piers Morgan Live” could end as early as next month, though Morgan may stay with the network in another role.
Morgan, a former British tabloid editor, replaced Larry King in the 9 p.m. hour three years ago, prior to Zucker’s tenure as president. His show earned consistently low ratings, registering as few as 50,000 viewers in the 25-to-54 year-old demographic earlier this week.
“CNN confirms that Piers Morgan Live is ending,” Allison Gollust, head of CNN communications, told POLITICO on Sunday after an earlier version of this post was published. “The date of the final program is still to be determined.”
Morgan told The New York Times on Sunday that the show had “run its course” and that he and Zucker “have been talking for some time about different ways of using me.” Sources who spoke to POLITICO said the decision to end the show was Zucker’s.
Zucker took the helm at CNN at the beginning of 2013 and has since brought incremental change to the network, including revitalized news programs and a new emphasis on films and documentary shows. Primetime remains the one area where Zucker has yet to impliment substantive change, a new 10 p.m. roundtable program with Anderson Cooper notwithstanding.
In October, Zucker hired Nightline anchor Bill Weir from ABC News, raising speculation that Weir might replace Morgan in the nine o’clock hour. CNN sources denied those rumors at the time.
Despite low ratings, Morgan drew national attention for his aggressive gun-control campaign following the Sandy Hook school shooting in Newtown, Conn. Morgan addressed the issue nightly for several weeks in late 2012 and early 2013 and hosted fiery, combative interviews with pro-gun adovcates like Alex Jones, a conservative conspiracy theorist.
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