Let’s look at the latest ratings woes of Piers “Endless Font of Schadenfreude” Morgan, courtesy of Rick Kissell at Variety:
Tuesday’s telecast [of Piers Morgan Live], which included coverage of the uprisings in Kiev and an interview with Rudy Giuliani, drew the show’s second smallest audience to date in the key news demo of adults 25-54 (50,000). It also drew just 270,000 total viewers, according to Nielsen, the show’s ninth smallest gathering ever.
Over ten times more people follow Morgan on Twitter than watch his show, which is on CNN, a former cable news network. That’s probably because Twitter doesn’t carry the sound of his voice. (Has he started posting Vines yet? I hope not, for his sake.)
And Kissell thinks he knows why Morgan’s ratings are even lower than his ethical standards:
Morgan has long been an outspoken critic of U.S. gun laws, but the drumbeat has grown louder in the two years since George Zimmerman fatally shot Trayvon Martin. On his CNN show in December 2012, Morgan got into a heated exchange with gun-rights activist Larry Pratt, asking at one point: “You’re an unbelievably stupid man, aren’t you?”
There’s no way to quantify how much of a factor the discussion of gun control on “Piers Morgan Live” has contributed to its ratings (which were never all that great to begin with), but the show’s numbers have fallen more sharply since it became a frequent subject on the show.
It can’t have helped. Who wants to watch a pompous Brit pontificate to Americans about guns? Um, that’s kinda why we broke off from you A-holes in the first place, old chap. We didn’t want you telling us what to do then, and we don’t want you telling us what to do now.
Fortunately, this time there’s no need for bloodshed. We’ll settle for Piers’ bitter tears backstage.
Update: Hello to all my good friends in Great Britain! I thought “A-holes” was rather mild, really, but I probably should’ve spelled it out to avoid confusing you. 🙂