News channel TalkTV, launched in 2022 by Rupert Murdoch’s News UK, is to stop broadcasting on television after struggling to match its main rival GB News for ratings.

TalkTV will switch to online platforms only from this summer, an email to staff announced on Tuesday. Last month, its best-known presenter, Piers Morgan, said he would be leaving his daily evening show. Morgan said he was leaving to focus on the Piers Morgan Uncensored YouTube channel, saying that daily, fixed TV schedules had been “an increasingly unnecessary straitjacket”.

The channel got off to disappointing start with “zero viewers” during primetime broadcasts, meaning its audience was too small to register on the official rating agency, Barb.