After six seasons as a judge on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” Piers Morgan announced Wednesday night (11/9) that he is leaving the show to focus on his daily CNN interview show, “Piers Morgan Tonight.” He conceded that doing both had turned out to be more difficult than he’d thought.
“I’m leaving America’s Got Talent after 6 wonderful years. Turned out that juggling’s harder than it looks, so I’m going to focus on CNN,” Morgan tweeted to fans on his Twitter account.
Then he elaborated with an announcement on his CNN show (video below). Noting the day’s resignation of Eddie Murphy as host of the Oscars, Morgan suggested that he was available for the gig, having opened up his schedule. On the serious side, he pointed to the 2012 elections as a reason to focus on his CNN program. And, only partly joking – owing to his long-running personality clash with Howie Mandel – Morgan said fellow judges Mandel and Sharon Osbourne, along with host Nick Cannon, would be relieved to no longer have to work with him.
RBR-TVBR observation: This completes a turnover at AGT, since Piers Morgan was the only judge who had been on the show from year one (and Nick Cannon is the third host). Piers has been branded the “mean” judge by fans, much like Simon Cowell on Fox’s “American Idol” and now “X Factor,” but the truth is he was brutally honest. Contestants knew that if they impressed Piers week after week they were really hitting the mark – and that his criticism should be dealt with seriously, even when it hurt to hear it.
