The look and feel of Piers Morgan Uncensored, aiming to be the fillet steak surrounded by gammon, sausagemeat, and plain old radio mince in Mr Murdoch's Media Butchers Shop, TalkTV, had the cognoscenti of tv direction and design drooling.
Technically slick, the first edition was overproduced and frighteningly light on content. Piers is no Letterman, Stewart or Colbert when it comes to opening monologues. He shouted and squeaked, betraying an empty village hall acoustic rather than the warm bubblewrap of a live audience, and his director punched in almost-snappy 'breaking' banners, clips and side-ways glances, in an attempt to provide visual humour, missing from the presenter's opening 1,500 words.
If scriptwriters had provided gags, they weren't zingers. Mr Morgan currently knocks out around three columns a week for The Sun, at around 1,250 words each - they won't all work on tv. The opening monologue needs to be an appointment-to-view, and I can't see this disturbing many Google Calendars.
Mr Morgan is not a good live interviewer. Piers Morgan's Life Stories needed heavy post-production. The Trump interview was filleted, breadcrumbed and deep-fried as goujons - all very well when your team has five or six days to do the work. 8 minutes monologue, 9 minutes of ad-break, and 2 minutes to wrap still leaves 38 minutes of solo conversation in a 55 minute 'hour'. Let's see how we feel in week 3 or 4.....
No comments:
Post a Comment