Biding

Piers Morgan seems in relaxed mood, during his current hiatus at CNN. He says he still has a contract, despite losing the weeknight show, and will be back on the network in some form.

A fan of schadenfreude, he will have noticed that, if the 9pm Eastern Standard Time slot was doing badly under his watch, it's tanking further without a regular host. Last week, in the hands of former ABC presenter Bill Weir, the show recorded scores of 96k, 100k, 71k, 89k and 48k in the 25-to-54 age group of US viewers. The network dropped from 37th position in the overall primetime cable network rankings, to 41st.

Network boss Jeff Zucker, meanwhile, faced CNN staff for a session of pre-submitted questions and answers. An Atlanta-based producer asked why managers fear him and are on “pins and needles’ when he comes up with ideas.

"I thought that was going to be Piers Morgan‘s question", said Jeff, "I don’t want anyone to feel like that. I want people to push back on me.… I throw out a lot of ideas and you know, honestly, half of them are crazy and you should ignore. I think the thing is to recognize and be confident in your own judgment… I do need to think about when we have our morning editorial meetings and I say I like something, then 10 shows go off and say we gotta do that. That is an issue.."

An issue, sometimes, in big licence-fee funded news organisations closer to home.