Piers Morgan to leave GMB

I missed this at the time and only saw it now. But blimey! Look how helpless Susanna is. Piers was incendiary. But, more than that, he’s not at all in control of the broadcast. And whilst it may make for great tv, it’s hugely risky for ITV because when guests are so incited by the host’s behaviour, anything could spill out from a verbal and abusive perspective.

Anchorman is supposed to ‘anchor’. That ship was all over the place.

And that clip showcases perfectly why I have not bothered watching GMB while Piers is in the hot seat for over a year now. It's a cacophony of "can I speak now?", "stop talking", "let me finish", and personal comments back and forth. The only thing I learned from that interview is that Piers and Shola disagree. This is the antithesis of high quality insightful interviewing.

Piers was incapable of leaving his own feelings to one side and interviewing guests fairly. For a good comparison, compare Piers' treatment of Shola above (with whom he disagrees ), and his treatment of Megyn Kelly (with whom he agrees ) below.



There's a section of this video where Megyn (who shares Piers' view) is allowed to speak for two minutes, completely uninterrupted and unchallenged. I don't think Shola (who opposes Piers' view) managed to get two sentences out, let alone two minutes.

As a presenter of a national morning news programme, it is imperative that you are able to interview people on both sides of a debate and do so fairly and without your own biases showing through. Piers just could not do this, and that's just not good enough.

There is no place for glorified slanging matches masquerading as news on national television, and I have my fingers crossed that we can look forward to a much better standard of interviewing - where the viewer may actually come away feeling better informed than they did at the start - going forward.

I'm not sure how much of this (this interview in particular and others over the years) is Piers being uncontrollable, as the gallery being unwilling to control him. If they wanted to they could have muted one of them to allow the other to make their point and keep it civilised, but instead they allow the slanging match to go on. No one has a voice in a studio if they don't have a microphone, just mute someone if they fail to shut up - simple.

The noticeable lack of condemnation and criticism of Piers on the show since he left, and from ITV speaks absolute volumes.

In other news, branding photos prominently featuring Piers are being removed from GMB's social media pages today, with the previous 'Piers taking a selfie of the team at the desk' banners being replaced with this one...



Wonder how long it'll be until we see a flurry of new GMB mocks using the above as a background...

"Up above the streets and houses............"

Produced by Pip2.

Also gone from the Meet The Team pages on the website. While on there I did notice banner ads for the ITV Shop which seems to be mostly selling branded reusable coffee cups for a few selected shows... for £10.95... Seems a bit steep...

Meanwhile, am told the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have now followed their complaint to ITV over Good Morning Britain with a complaint to Ofcom.

— Archie Bland (@archiebland) March 12, 2021

I don’t quite understand what they’re hoping to achieve from an Ofcom complaint, considering Piers has now gone? I can only presume a fine for ITV?

Which would be a blow for ITV considering they paid for the interview & how much of a ratings success it was for them.

Sorry to get into Piers replacements again, but this suggestion was too good not to mention - Lord Sugar?

Any fine would be relatively smaller than it could have been because IIRC its based on the turnover of whoever is responsible for whatever went wrong at the time. ITV puts all its programme compliance stuff through Channel, who "compile" all that (whatever that means) so any sh*t that hits the fan that attracts a fine won't be anywhere near as bad as as it would have been had it gone through what was Carlton/ITV London weekday for example.