Morgan promises Obama but delivers Kardashians

Piers Morgan boasted before he took over Larry King's CNN talk show that he would bag an interview with President Barack Obama. But less than two weeks into the job, the former Daily Mirror editor and Britain's Got Talent judge has been reduced to chewing the fat with supermarket tabloid fodder Kim and Kourtney Kardashian.
 
As a result, ratings for his nightly show, which began well enough – debut guest Oprah Winfrey attracted 2.1 million viewers - have slumped. The appearance by the reality show starlets, with whom Morgan discussed topics ranging from their breasts to videos of them having sex, attracted fewer than 500,000 viewers.
 
Rather embarrassingly his chinwag with the socialite sisters was outperformed in the ratings by a documentary about life at a supermarket chain on the unglamorous business channel CNBC. Elsewhere, Rachel Maddow on MSNBC had double the number of viewers and, over on Fox, Sean Hannity mustered just shy of 2 million.
 
Could it be that Morgan misjudged his new audience and has failed to grasp the finer points of American talk show culture?
 
After all, he cut his interviewing teeth on ITV, where his teary-eyed confessionals with heavyweight guests like Cheryl Cole and Susan Boyle proved to be far more popular than his encounter with the then prime minister Gordon Brown (who attracted 3.5 million fewer viewers than Cole).
 
Unluckily for Morgan, in America it seems that CNN's audience is less fascinated with reality TV show stars than it is with proper personalities.
 
That makes Morgan's efforts to lure Obama onto his show even more admirable. The question now is whether the President is prepared to follow in the footsteps of the Kardashians. ·