Piers Morgan Pegged to Fill Larry King's Suspenders

Sept. 8, 2010— -- CNN's found a man fit to fill Larry King's suspenders.

Today, the cable news network announced that Piers Morgan will replace veteran interviewer King come January, confirming rumors that had been swirling since King's June declaration that he's done with the nightly talk show grind.

"Piers has made his name posing tough questions to public figures, holding them accountable for their words and deeds," CNN/U.S. president Jon Klein said in a statement released by the network. "He is able to look at all aspects of the news with style and humor with an occasional good laugh in the process. He is a natural fit with Anderson Cooper, Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker in our prime time lineup, and the ideal choice to update the storied tradition of newsmaker talk on CNN."

While American audiences probably know Morgan, 45, best as a judge on the NBC reality competition series "America's Got Talent" and as a winner of Donald Trump's reality competition show "Celebrity Apprentice," he's known in Britain as a journalist, of sorts.

In 1994, when Morgan was 28 years old, Rupert Murdoch appointed him the youngest-ever editor of the News of the World. Following a stint at the popular British tabloid, he moved to the Daily Mirror, where he served as editor-in-chief from 1995 until 2004. He also appeared on the BBC, ITV and "Britain's Got Talent" before hopping the pond to American TV.

"I am thrilled to be joining CNN, and very much looking forward to bringing my own style of interviewing to the world's biggest, and best, TV news organization," Morgan said in a statement released by CNN. "Perhaps most pertinently, I have watched 'Larry King Live' for much of the last 25 years, and dreamed of one day filling the legendary suspenders of the man I consider to be the greatest TV interviewer of them all."

Piers Morgan Fills Larry King's Suspenders

In June, King announced he'd be "hanging up his suspenders" after hosting a live show on CNN for 25 years.

"Twenty-five years ago, I sat across this table from New York Gov. Mario Cuomo for the first broadcast of 'Larry King Live,'" he told his audience on June 29. "Now, decades later, I talked to the guys here at CNN, and I told them I would like to end 'Larry King Live,' the nightly show, this fall and CNN has graciously accepted, to agree to giving me more time for my wife and to get to the kids' Little League games."

He added that after leaving in the fall, he would remain affiliated with the cable news network in a more limited capacity, hosting the occasional special.

King, 76, a former radio host from Brooklyn, New York, is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the longest-running show with the same host in the same time slot on the same network. While he dominated the airwaves in decades past and has, by his own estimate, conducted upwards of 50,000 interviews, his show has recently had subpar ratings.

"Larry King Live" had an average of 653,000 viewers each night in May, its lowest average since the data started being electronically stored in the early 1990s, according to the Nielsen Company.

ABC News' Luchina Fisher and Brian Braiker contributed reporting.