It’s been an unhappy collision between a British television personality who refuses to assimilate — the only football he cares about is round and his lectures on guns were rife with contempt — and a CNN audience that is intrinsically provincial. After all, the people who tune into a cable news network are, by their nature, deeply interested in America.
CNN’s president, Jeffrey Zucker,
has other problems, but none bigger than Mr. Morgan and his plum 9 p.m.
time slot. Mr. Morgan said last week that he and Mr. Zucker had been
talking about the show’s failure to connect and had decided to pull the
plug, probably in March.
Crossing
an ocean for a replacement for Larry King, who had ratings problems of
his own near the end, was probably not a great idea to begin with. For a
cable news station like CNN, major stories are like oxygen. When
something important or scary happens in America, many of us have an
immediate reflex to turn on CNN. When I find Mr. Morgan telling me what
it all means, I have a similar reflex to dismiss what he is saying. It
is difficult for him to speak credibly on significant American events
because, after all, he just got here. (Continues at NYT)
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