Talk of The Town: New Channel Beats News Rivals

TalkTV has day one win, but let's see what happens next.

Piers Morgan has returned to UK screens. You'll likely know this as he has been on a mammoth promotional tour for his show 'Piers Morgan Uncensored', which began at 8 PM BST on Monday and took up the second hour of new channel TalkTV's launch night. (It was preceded by 'The News Hour' with Tom Newton Dunn and followed by 'The Talk' with Sharon Osbourne.)

TalkTV Wins on Launch Night

On launch night, TalkTV was the most-watched of all UK news channels across those three prime-time hours. Morgan's show attracted an average of 317, 000 viewers, again beating off competition from rival news channels. This figure rose to 588, 000 with the 11 PM BST repeat.

To give an idea of the scale of ambition, there's been a separate studio built in Ealing for Morgan's show. It is simulcast on TalkRadio in the UK, available in the US on the Fox Nation streaming service and on Sky News Australia, and syndicated to RTL in Holland. Its opening night was dominated by the first part of an interview with former US President Donald Trump, who Morgan knows from ‘The Apprentice’ and has interviewed previously. (Part two goes out today. Is Trump more enticing than Manchester City vs Real Madrid?)

Technically OK

The launch night, which started with a drone shot of the News UK building, was extremely slick, save for some early lipsyncing issues. The channel is also not available in HD on Freeview and therefore looks horrible on that platform. (It looks much better on YouTube). This is apparently due to bandwidth issues - The Addition has been told that one HD channel on Freeview takes up the equivalent of four SD channels.

All-in-all TalkTV's launch totally eclipsed the shambolic start to life for GB News. It should have, given the difference in resources available to the two channels. TalkTV looks like Fox News, which in TV news production terms is something of a compliment. It doesn't sound like Fox News (yet).

Trump Gets Let Off