Piers Morgan to replace Larry King

CNN has confirmed speculation that Piers Morgan will replace Larry King early next year.

King announced he was retiring from Larry King Live earlier this year and is expected to wrap the show in December.

Morgan, a former British tabloid newspaper editor, is best-known to U.S. audiences as a judge on America’s Got Talent. That already has some scratching their heads over the choice.

The LA Times filed Twitter responses in an article that said, “Piers Morgan? Of all the people who could have taken over Larry King’s CNN show, the cable giant picked a Brit who, unless you’ve seen one talent show, most Americans are unfamiliar with. And those who tweet are asking, ‘What the heck’?”

But CNN is talking Morgan up.

“Piers has made his name posing tough questions to public figures, holding them accountable for their words and deeds,” Jon Klein, the president of CNN/US, said in a statement. “He is able to look at all aspects of the news with style and humor with an occasional good laugh in the process. He is a natural fit with Anderson Cooper, Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker in our prime time line-up, and the ideal choice to update the storied tradtiion of newsmaker talk on CNN.”

Morgan said in a CNN news release: “I am thrilled to be joining CNN, and very much looking forward to bringing my own style of interviewing to the world’s biggest, and best, TV news organization.”

Morgan has demonstrated an ability to push interview subjects to share intimate details about their lives. In his column for the British edition of GQ, he got British politician Nick Clegg to confess he had slept with nearly 30 women and actress Helen Mirren to admit to taking cocaine.

CNN will be hoping he can bring such skills to the network. Ratings for Larry King Live have  diminished in recent years, while CNN has suffered severely at the hands of competitors FOX News and MSNBC.

No word on how Morgan might look in braces….

Source: LA Times