Is Piers Morgan's move to YouTube a step towards deregulated television newsrooms?

To no one's great surprise, Piers Morgan has ditched a linear television station that almost no one was watching for the promise of meeting the masses online. The greatest shock about Talk TV was that it ever became a 24 hour Ofcom-regulated news channel at all. An even greater shock was that it arrived just as GB News tried to pull off exactly the same trick of trying make news channels destinations of choice for a nation which, at best, had grown used to watching Sky News on mute at the gym.

It would be too easy to say it hasn't worked. Indeed audiences of GB News are still growing. And even over at News UK there are strong signs the studio lights will still be shining, even though the current incarnation appears doomed. It was last summer when stories began doing the rounds that Talk TV would soon become Sun TV. If News UK decides to revive it's ailing television channel with a rebrand, it's hard to see how it will want to continue to sit under rules and regulations that compel broadcasters to remain impartial. Even if it sticks with its existing name, with viewers no longer restricted to watching linear, there's no longer the same desire and drive to become remain a news channel.

Alongside Piers Morgan's announcement, widely quoted but buried deep in most copy was a telling quote from News UK's executive vice president and president of broadcasting, Scott Taunton:

"More and more, audiences are consuming video news and opinion online through their phones and this evolution is set to continue. It’s also where the advertising revenues are. Creating professional quality, TV-like video that does well digitally — via streaming services and social media — will be the focus of future investment for all our brands, including Talk [TV]."

Far from backing away from broadcasting, News UK is leaning in. In streamers and social sites, it has found an audience and see potential profits. What's more, online is a space where it can broadcast what it wants, when it wants without the hang-ups of traditional television. Without an audience on linear TV, who could blame them? This is probably a decision based primarily on meeting the audience where they are. Yet in an instant, they're also doing away with the compulsion to be balanced and impartial.

News UK will not the the only newsroom to move its broadcasting online. As others join, an increasingly small island of media will be compelled to play by the broadcasting rules. They are principles that were shaped a century ago with the founding of the BBC. Back then its intensely moralistic managing editor John Reith prescribed a form of broadcasting that championed probity, universality and equal consideration of everyone's views. When commercial companies were given a look in, regulations in the Reithian spirit were adopted across the industry. As a result, radio and television companies in this country have always sought to show balance across their coverage.

Tomorrow night, as Piers Morgan's Uncensored show goes live on YouTube, he could choose to do away with all that. No longer bound by regulations, it will be the programme team's choice whether and when to show their hand. The same will be true for the rest of the network if it also becomes an online-only broadcaster.

There is unlikely to be a single moment here where the journalism will change. And for as long as it remains harder to get digital only channels on the television in the room, or on the radio in the car those with Ofcom-licenses will have an advantage. But over time, this sort of migration will change the audience's understand of broadcast news. One of those changes is the underlying perception that broadcast news is impartial.