There was no big celebration for Piers Morgan, no cake delivered to his desk on-air, no interviews with his favorite guests, no serenade from Bette Midler. On the last episode of CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight, the former British tabloid editor exited mostly quietly, after three years of ho-hum interviews and poor ratings.
For 58 of his 60 minutes, Morgan, a dutiful CNN-er until the end, talked exclusively about The Plane. Or, as CNN chyrons have branded the subject for what seem like hundreds or thousands of consecutive hours: “THE MYSTERY OF FLIGHT 370”.
In those 58 minutes, Morgan interviewed CNN contributor (and fellow Brit) Richard Quest about the latest in the search for Malaysia Airlines flight 370, the son of a passenger onboard, and a panel of four experts – CNN’s “safety analyst” and “aviation analyst” among them.
“Breaking news”, Morgan said at the beginning of a mid-show segment. “We’re waiting for word.”
The missing flight has provided a strange twist to the end of Morgan’s brief CNN career: his ratings, like all of CNN’s ratings, have been up. The network’s laser-like and frequently absurd focus on the all-things-MH370 has worked out. And as Morgan himself pointed out on Twitter on Friday, hours after announcing that his final show would be that evening, he scored CNN’s highest ratings in the crucial 25-54-year-old demographic the previous Thursday.
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SOURCE: Jim Newell
theguardian.com
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