Piers Morgan's CNN show cancelled after 3 years

CNN has announced that its prime-time talk show Piers Morgan Live is coming to an end.

Morgan, who succeeded Larry King in the 9 p.m. ET time slot three years ago, was drawing lacklustre ratings. In contrast, King had a 25-year run on CNN. 

According to Nielsen ratings from last week, Piers Morgan Live was seen nightly by just 270,000 viewers nationwide and only 50,000 people in the key advertising demographic of Americans ages 25 to 54. The airdate for Morgan's last show has yet to be determined, CNN said in a statement.

In his interview with the Times, Morgan said he thought the audience may have grown weary of his focus on gun control -- a major topic of conversation on the show in the wake of several mass shootings in the United States.

"Look, I am a British guy debating American cultural issues, including guns, which has been very polarizing," he said. "There is no doubt that there are many in the audience who are tired of me banging on about it."

Morgan is a former U.K. tabloid editor who reinvented himself as a TV personality with stints as a judge on Britain's Got Talent and its U.S. spinoff, NBC's America's Got Talent, and as a contestant on Celebrity Apprentice.

He hosted BBC's You Can't Fire Me, I'm Famous, and did interview shows and documentaries for ITV.

Morgan told The New York Times that his show lately has "taken a bath in the ratings" but that he and CNN President Jeff Zucker were discussing a new role for him at the channel. CNN's audience has tired of hearing a Brit weigh in American cultural issues, Morgan said in a story posted online Sunday.

Morgan's future with CNN is undetermined, the channel said.

Last fall, the already struggling Piers Morgan Live faced increased competition from a revised Fox News Channel lineup that included a strong new performer at 9 p.m. ET with Megyn Kelly's The Kelly File.

Morgan served as editor of The Daily Mirror from 1995 to 2004. He has been questioned in connection with Britain's long-running phone hacking scandal, which has led to numerous arrests, resignations and the closure of Rupert Murdoch's News of the World tabloid.