At the end of Monday’s premiere of CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight,” Larry King’s replacement asked first guest Oprah Winfrey to assess his opening night performance.

Winfrey concluded that he was “surprising.”

“Surprisingly bad?” joked Morgan (see above).

Of course, Winfrey was a gracious guest and wouldn’t say any such thing.

But your friendly neighborhood television critic doesn’t have to hold back.

The Brit was surprisingly fawning – he referred to Winfrey as The American Queen — for a guy who supposedly asks tough questions.

He also should be hired out as a laugh track. Morgan let out so many big laughs after routine Winfrey comments that you might have thought he was talking to Jerry Seinfeld, Jimmy Fallon, David Letterman or Chris Rock.

Worse yet, the interview was boring.

That may have been partly due to the fact it was taped rather than live as King’s show was for decades and partly because Winfrey knew where she was willing to go and where she wasn’t going to go.

The most-lively part of the interview came when Morgan bet Winfrey 200 British pounds over who would be the first host to get NFL star Michael Vick for an interview.

Other than that, Morgan’s topics didn’t elicit much of anything new about the talk show giant, whose life is an open book anyway.

One could see why Winfrey agreed to take best friend Gayle King’s advice to do the interview.

The amiable Morgan’s first show was bound to get a big audience and that enabled Winfrey to promote her new cable network, OWN. Indeed, at times the interview seemed to be a promotion for OWN.

If it hadn’t been the first show, I probably wouldn’t have lasted 10 minutes.

Of course, all talk shows are marathons and not sprints, so Morgan deserves at least a second chance tonight when his guest is Howard Stern.

If Morgan refers to Stern as the King – as in the King of All Media – I’m out of there.

* I was somewhat amused to read a column in the op-ed section of The Buffalo News with the headline “FCC Needs to Return Airwaves to the People” that suggested the commission do something to stop the vitriol from right-wing radio talk show hosts Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and others.

Anyone who isn’t a conservative and tunes into Limbaugh’s misleading outrageousness on WBEN-AM on a semi-regular basis would understand why writer Douglas Turner felt the need to call for the FCC to do something.

But I was amused because much of the harshest right wing vitriol really is on the Fox News, where Hannity also works (and on Monday carried another Sarah Palin interview). And the left wing vitriol is on MSNBC.

Fox News and MSNBC have little in common, except one huge thing. They are basic cable channels, which means they aren’t regulated by the FCC.

In other words, even if the FCC tried to do something that would soften radio content, it can’t do anything about the daily vitriol from both sides of the political spectrum on basic cable.

Advertisers really are the “regulators” of basic cable and to an extent radio. If they pulled away or boycotted Limbaugh’s negative act on WBEN and other stations across the country, then things might change marginally.

While we’re on the subject of boycotts, a local radio talk show host, offended by a Buffalo News editorial about right-wing hate speech and a political carton attacking Palin, recently advocated having upset readers cancel the paper.

I will agree the editorial was questionable and the cartoon was so offensive that it shouldn’t have run. In defense, the newspaper’s talented editorial page editor is on sick leave and his staff was very thin before he took leave so perhaps things can fall through the cracks more easily.  

The newspaper shouldn’t be above criticism and it has since published letters to the editor condemning the cartoon and editorial.

Having said that, it isn’t wise for any media outlet – especially one that lives off the outrageousness of its hosts– to advocate what amounts to a boycott of a competitor. In fact, it is reprehensible.

pergament@msn.com

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