Teacher:In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Teacher: Now, understand the problem? Solve this instance: Rupert Murdoch supposedly wished his old employee Piers Morgan well, but not too much success in his new gig on CNN. The News Corp. chairman, ever mindful of Fox News' profits, needn't have worried. 
  
 "Piers Morgan Tonight" is the second holdover from CNN's former management, and to say the show's debut was more polished than "Parker-Spitzer" is hardly an unqualified endorsement. Instead, Morgan was so deferential in his hour-long chat with Oprah Winfrey that the adjective she used to describe his interviewing skills -- "Surprising" -- seemed very generous indeed. "Boring" would be more accurate. 
  
 Morgan -- known as an interviewer in the U.K., and an "America's Got Talent" judge in the U.S. -- didn't really press Winfrey on any front. Sure, he asked some questions about her personal life, her wealth, her role in campaigning for Barack Obama, but he let her prattle on about her "mission" and larger purpose without any mention of the messianic terms she regularly uses to discuss herself and her media empire. 
  
 To her credit, Winfrey -- in saying she was in no way disappointed with Obama's presidency -- reminded Morgan that there's a "learning curve" in any job, and it would be unfair to judge him based strictly on this first program. But other than laughing too hard at her jokes and being generally pleasant, it's hard to see how this is any improvement over what Larry King was doing in the timeslot, other than being about three decades younger. 
  
 The front-loaded lineup of first-week guests includes Howard Stern, Ricky Gervais and George Clooney. But any nightly (or daily) show of this kind is only as good as its host, and if this is the template, Morgan won't offer much reason to tune in on nights when he has lesser newsmakers. 
  
 The premiere, notably, went up against about as partisan a night on CNN's cable rivals as you're apt to find: Sean Hannity sitting in Sarah Palin's lap (not quite literally) on Fox News' "Hannity," while Rachel Maddow hosted Michael Moore to discuss gun-control legislation on MSNBC. Hannity pitched softballs at Palin for a full half-hour, before segueing to Michael Reagan to criticize his brother's book about their father. 
  
 For hard-core conservatives, that's the equivalent of having Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in your lineup. 
  
 It would be lovely if CNN had the smarts to offer a legitimate alternative to those political poles, but based on first impressions, "Piers Morgan" isn't it. ||||| cable news news Piers Morgan Takes On Oprah, and Comes Up Short 
  
 After weeks of building buzz, on Monday night it was finally time for Piers Morgan Tonight to fill television's biggest suspenders in the nine o'clock CNN slot that Larry King made famous. Morgan's interviews will clearly be more personal and pointed. He came across as polite and intelligent, and clearly does his homework. But his choice of Oprah Winfrey as his first guest was a drastic error. From the hotel room interview set — more Barbara Walters Fascinating People than anything resembling King's familiar dark-room-and-desk setup — to his obsequious bowing and scraping, the interview with the reigning queen of TV made him look like a commoner. 
  
 The thing is, Morgan's no amateur. He's a journalist with decades of experience in print and television — not that he appeared that way in a sedate hotel room filled with flowers and cigar boxes. 
  
 (There's a reason Barbara uses rooms like this, and Diane Sawyer, and the good people of 60 Minutes. Their interviews are soft. They're restrained. Piers is big and loud. His normal set, which it seems like he'll start using later this week for a sit-down with Howard Stern, is much more suited to him.) 
  
 Not being an amateur is one thing. Trying to face off with Oprah Winfrey is quite another. She is a legendary interviewer and an alpha dog, and she put Piers through his paces. Nine minutes in, she was telling him exactly what he wasn't going to get out of her, saying, "You're wasting your time with the Stedman thing!" She talked directly to the camera. After Piers asked whether she had ever been in therapy, she turned the query right around on him and went on the attack. When he asked her what advice she'd give to Eagles quarterback Michael Vick, she calmly stated that she'd be saving that for when she got Vick on her own show. And near the end of the interview, she just told him what question he should ask her. (It was, "What do you do best?" When Piers asked it, Oprah gave a canned, hokey answer.) 
  
 Piers's final plea was, "How did I do?" It was the first time he'd asked it explicitly, but it seemed like the whole interview was about seeking Oprah's approval. He constantly asked how it was going, and backed off easily when Oprah rebuffed him — never pushing for something deeper or truer from the gifted talker. "C'mon," he said, asking about the biggest check she ever wrote to the IRS. "Give the new boy a break." His giggling style might have come across as charming in the studio on his own turf, or in an interview with someone less intimidating. Here it made him seem sycophantic and almost childish. When he reached out to her and said, "Everything you touch turns to gold. Could you touch me?" I almost turned off the television. 
  
 It wasn't all bad, though. There were signs of life in his interviewing style. He asked questions that real people would want to ask Oprah, even though she'd been asked many of them before. Questions like "Do you feel regal?" and "Do you like being famous?" provoked interesting answers. Likewise, "How many times have you been properly in love?" Her painful story of going to live with her father as a secretly pregnant 14-year-old felt poignant and honest. And he got her to talk a little bit about being rich, which was funny and refreshing. "I'm not sitting around counting it," Oprah said, brushing aside a question about her total worth. "I bet you know exactly how much you're worth!" Piers shot back. "Yes I do," she conceded. So how did she know? "Because I'd already counted it," she said. 
  
 That was Piers's mistake in having Oprah on for his very first episode. He doesn't yet know how much he's worth in this new chair at CNN. But Oprah knows exactly how much she's worth, and it's definitely more than this untested — if bright and charming — British import. The gap in confidence, even muffled as it was by flowers and soft lighting, was glaring. ||||| The premiere of Piers Morgan Tonight revealed host Piers Morgan to be clever, tenacious, vain, a flatterer, and fitfully funny. Oh, and he had a big-name first guest: Oprah Winfrey, who talked about contemplating suicide at age 14, her quest to interview Michael Vick, and how many times she’s had her heart broken (twice). 
  
 Morgan pumped up his subject shamelessly: “She’s the biggest, richest, most powerful star in the world!” “You would make a fantastic mother!” “Everything you touch is a hit — could you just touch me?” Morgan, reaching for the highest compliment a fawning British subject could pay a woman, said Winfrey was “the American Queen.” Oprah replied, regally: “I will accept it.” 
  
 The America’s Got Talent judge has a bit of a doughy face and a small mouth (this is what happens when you host a talk show with at least as many close-ups on you as on your guest — people look more closely at you), and his clever-schoolboy demeanor serves him well. The hosts revealed they were both trying to book dog fancier Michael Vick as a guest, and Morgan offered to bet her “100 British pounds” on who’ll snap him up first. “Make it two,” said Oprah coolly. 
  
 Oprah gassed on and on about her newly launched OWN network, which was doubtlessly a big reason she agreed to the highly publicized interview. But she was more interesting, of course, when she inadvertently revealed her ego — she said her role in life is nothing less than to “evolve the consciousness” of people. More interesting was her self-definition: “I am a Negro, formerly, born in 1954, in Mississippi when it was an apartheid state” and that therefore it was “a miracle,” what she’s attained. 
  
 She spoke about losing a baby when she was 14, saying that the loss was “a relief” because “I thought I was going to have to kill myself,” given the strict rules she was raised under at home. In general, Winfrey was probably as open as she’s ever been with an interviewer, which is to say, not much, but Morgan extracted some nice moments, even if he had to beg: “Give a new boy a break.” 
  
 As for whether the “new boy” is a worthy replacement for Larry King… come on, you didn’t watch Larry King Live, did you? Simply by having facts about his subject at hand and speaking coherently, Morgan aced King on his opening night. I’m looking forward to seeing him interview Howard Stern tomorrow night. 
  
 Did you watch Piers Morgan Tonight? 
  
 Twitter: @kentucker ||||| Piers Morgan (Credit: GETTY) 
  
 If he'd watched this, Ricky Gervais might just have needed a very large handkerchief. 
  
 The debut of fellow Englishman Piers Morgan's talk show on CNN, the one in which he officially succeeded Larry King, showed none of Gervais' pointed exposition of celebrity at the Golden Globes. 
  
 Instead, Morgan's debut was a wonderful advertisement. 
  
 A wonderful advertisement for Oprah Winfrey's new OWN TV channel. 
  
 It was an advertisement in which Piers Morgan largely served as the announcer. 
  
 It was an advertisement in which the Celebrity Apprentice positively begged to be allowed into the inner sanctum of Celebrity's Board of Directors. 
  
 It even began with an advertisement for Oprah's new OWN channel, as if everyone should understand from the outset that this was product placement, not some in depth exploration of America's most popular woman. 
  
 Morgan's nerves showed in his voice, his eyes and his desperation to have physical contact with his guest. 
  
 Oprah looked benignly in his direction, as if he was a sweet, ambitious nephew whose mom had asked someone in the upper echelons of television to help him with his career. 
  
 She did her best. Hers, as she said, is the Love Brand. So she tried to sprinkle a little love-dust upon his tightly-woven eyebrows. 
  
 She called him good. Twice. 
  
 But she also told him that he was going to get nothing newsworthy, nothing controversial, nothing titillating. 
  
 In fact, by the end of the hour's show, what Oprah gave the well-prepped Morgan was nothing special. 
  
 Nothing other than a schooling in what it was to know your self and your brand and to be able to control how you are seen. 
  
 Morgan, in his British talk show, was able to get a mediocre singer and an equally mediocre prime minister to show genuine tears. 
  
 Here, he was more successful in getting Oprah to show genuine pity at the obvious methods he was using in the hope of eliciting a headline, a snippet of her life story that had never before been revealed. 
  
 Several times, she forced Morgan into the nervous laughter of a stair salesman who suddenly realizes he's in a ranch house. 
  
 Oddly, his reputedly large and healthy ego nudged him to try and equate himself with her. 
  
 Oprah explained that the end of her popular afternoon show wasn't the end of her career. She said: "I'm just getting started". 
  
 Morgan's nervous schoolboy jaw-jerked him into "Aren't we all?" 
  
 As if the two could somehow be compared. 
  
 Morgan clearly felt that flattery would get him everywhere. 
  
 "You are the American Queen," he told Oprah, sounding so very much like Tony Blair naming the dead Diana Spencer "The People's Princess". 
  
 Perhaps he might have tried to tell her something she doesn't know. 
  
 The blue cards he clutched in his no doubt ever-moisting palms seemed to hold no key, no provocation that Oprah couldn't have seen coming without so much as the opening of an eye or the sniffing of a breeze. 
  
 At one point, as if telling her audience not to worry, she spoke directly to the camera, rather than to him. 
  
 She wasn't going to forget who she was. And neither would he. 
  
 By the end, he was asking her how well he had done. She patted him on the head. Metaphorically, of course. 
  
 Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King tells the story of two British adventurers who become Kings in a remote part of Afghanistan. This Man Who Would Be King is a British man is trying to become King in a remote part of Atlanta. 
  
 He will feel vindicated in merely having been anointed with Oprah's presence. 
  
 His better tests will come should he manage to squeeze some snafu-laden news from an unsuspecting notable. 
  
 Perhaps Paris Hilton might admit she doesn't really like sex. 
  
 Oprah described her message like this: "I am the messenger to deliver the message of hope and redemption." 
  
 The Love Brand tried to give Morgan hope that he would not be in need of redemption. 
  
 She tried to make him believe that, one day, he will wake up and declare: "Bloody Hell, I'm Piers Morgan", just as he wondered whether she wakes up and thinks: "Bloody hell, I'm Oprah." 
  
 Wednesday, Morgan gets to interview Howard Stern. That should be far more his style. 
  
 Oh, and Thursday it's Ricky Gervais. Let's hope he tells Morgan what really went on in the restroom at the Golden Globes. |||||
Student:
The obnoxious Piers Morgan familiar to reality show fans was nowhere to be seen as Piers Morgan Tonight made its debut in Larry King's old time slot on CNN, say critics. Morgan was fawning and deferential during his highly publicized interview with Oprah Winfrey. Some early reaction: "Morgan's nerves showed in his voice, his eyes and his desperation to have physical contact with his guest," writes Chris Matyszczyk at CBS, who predicts the real test for the host will come later this week, with guests including Ricky Gervais and Howard Stern. Oprah did surrender some details about her life story, but she was allowed to set the tone of the interview, which became largely a plug for her own network, Brian Lowry writes at Variety. As for his interviewing skills, which Oprah described as "surprising?" Quips Lowry, "'Boring' would be more accurate." "His giggling style might have come across as charming ... in an interview with someone less intimidating," writes Chris Rovzar for New York. "Here it made him seem sycophantic and almost childish. When he reached out to her and said, 'Everything you touch turns to gold. Could you touch me?' I almost turned off the television." Ken Tucker at Entertainment Weekly writes that, "In general, Winfrey was probably as open as she’s ever been with an interviewer, which is to say, not much." But despite the softball interview, Tucker believes Morgan has already shown himself to be a more than worthy successor to King. "Simply by having facts about his subject at hand and speaking coherently, Morgan aced King on his opening night," he writes. (Click to find out who didn't wish Morgan success.)