Piers Morgan is going solo for the first time with an all-in bet on the future of digital media, leaving behind his decades-long career in a traditional print and broadcasting industry he predicts will vanish in the next decade.
The veteran media pundit this week bought out his Uncensored YouTube channel from Rupert Murdoch, one of his first employers and a close ally, ending a three-year deal with News UK worth tens of millions of pounds despite what he says was a “very generous” offer to stay.
Sitting in a Kensington café near his home the day after the news broke, Morgan admitted it was a gamble but one he was — not unusually — supremely confident would pay off.
“I want to be the global forum for debate and big interviews,” the 59-year-old former tabloid boss said, laying out ambitious plans to create a new podcast, live shows and a broader Uncensored franchise that would bring in other presenters alongside his own existing YouTube audience.
“If I get the right people with me and I can build the right stable of people and we can commercialise them properly then there’s no reason at all that in five years’ time we can’t have a business worth a billion dollars up.”
Morgan’s move marks a bold bet not only on the value of his personal brand but also on what he sees as the inevitable and looming dominance of digital platforms as audiences, particularly younger generations, abandon legacy media.
His YouTube channel already has 3.6mn subscribers, with his most popular shows attracting 20mn viewers. More than three-quarters of his audience is under 45, and more than half in the US.
After Joe Rogan, “we’re probably the number two show now in the world in the news, debate, opinion space — there’s no one getting more consistently big numbers,” he said. “It’s a bit of a gamble. It may not work quite how I see it but it is not like we’re launching a start-up.”
He is already thinking about what will appear next on his YouTube channel under his ownership. Donald Trump has promised him an interview in the White House, according to Morgan, who reckons he may have interviewed the US president-elect more times than any other journalist.
Trump had called him “five or six times” since the summer, Morgan said, most recently a “hilarious conversation” a couple of weeks ago when he phoned to tell the presenter he looked good on TV.
“Since he got such a big win, he’s definitely much calmer, much more focused on legacy now and having got a second chance to be an incredibly transformative and historic president.”
Under the deal with News UK, Morgan now wholly owns the Uncensored brand but Murdoch’s business will take a decreasing share of the YouTube advertising revenue over the next four years.
He said the terms of the deal felt right, having “built this thing together”, and that he had turned down a “very generous offer” from News UK to stay on a similar contract.
“I get on brilliantly with Rupert and Lachlan,” he said, referring to Murdoch’s eldest son and chosen heir to his media empire. “We’ve all known each other for a very long time. But I didn’t want to be a hired hand any more.”
Morgan still has a book coming out through HarperCollins, owned by News Corp, and will also write the occasional column for Murdoch newspapers. For now, Uncensored will continue to broadcast from the News UK studios in the UK, as well as the US. “It’s all very, very friendly. I very much want to stay part of the family.”
But he said the opportunity was too great ahead of his 60th birthday in March. “It’s the first time I’ve been my own boss. I could have taken the easier route of just carrying on being an employee. But I would have been kicking myself.”
He was also motivated by the realisation that the future of media lay online, he said, pointing to data suggesting that YouTube would “quite quickly” become the preferred way that Americans watch television.
“More people watched the US election in America on YouTube in terms of results, analysis and opinions than watched on cable or broadcast for the first time ever,” he added. “And how did Trump win? Well, a large part of it was doing all the YouTubers and streamers.”
Online creator-led shows have become increasingly influential, with many media pundits crediting shows such as The Joe Rogan Experience for mobilising the younger, “bro-culture” voters for Trump.
UFC boss Dana White — appointed this week to the board of Meta — made it clear who was to thank when he joined Trump onstage on election night: the “mighty and powerful Joe Rogan”, alongside other online figures such as Adin Ross and the Nelk Boys.
These influencers’ shows garner millions of listens as podcasts and YouTube videos, and billions more as clips across social media.
“Everyone now gets the power of YouTube,” Morgan said, pointing to the appeal of his channel to world leaders who have appeared on his show such as Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu. “You can do an interview with conventional TV but where are you going to get that kind of audience? It is the future.”
Morgan believes traditional cable and terrestrial channels are doomed.
“Linear network stuff is just dead now. It’ll take a while to die, but it’s dead. I can guarantee you, in 10 years’ time, none of them will exist,” he said. “Everything is going away from legacy media to personal-brand media. Some of the biggest stars in the world are not attached to any networks or newspapers like they used to be when I grew up. Thanks to the internet and social media, [they] work for themselves.”
He sees the media empires built by conservative political pundits such as Ben Shapiro, who has about 7mn subscribers on YouTube, and more specifically his wider Daily Wire media group, as the model for the future.
They also make a lot of money — something Morgan is very conscious of when assessing his own potential value. “We haven’t commercialised the channel at all. All we’ve done is take our share of YouTube ad revenue. Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly, Ben Shapiro [have] so many different ways to commercialise a YouTube following [and] I’m one of the most followed people on YouTube in this game in the world.”
YouTube also cut through to groups of younger viewers that other news broadcasters struggled to reach, he said, while advertisers also like that much of his business is focused in the US, where the most lucrative audiences can be found.
“If I walked around with you for an hour, either here or New York or LA or Sydney or wherever it may be, you’d be staggered how many people just come up to talk — it’s more than I’ve had for anything I’ve ever done on mainstream media and they’re predominantly younger.”
His channel tends to be a mix of interviews and debates with guests, from politicians to celebrities to more controversial figures such as Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate. The channel is more than just shock tactics in the culture wars; even his critics would agree that he tries to generate informed debate and challenge guests. “I don’t want it to be a circus,” he said.
Elon Musk, who has been accused of giving extremist voices a platform amid posts on his social media site X attacking the UK government’s response to a child sex abuse scandal, is another interview Morgan hopes to land soon.
He said the billionaire was a genius and right to highlight the scandal, but that he was still troubled about the broader rise of misinformation and disinformation on social media, including X. “When he reposts people, he’s amplifying these views to massive numbers of people. I’m not sure he thinks about that as much as he should.”
