Piers Morgan Tonight Crushes Larry King Ratings with Oprah Interview

British broadcast journalist Piers Morgan officially took over Larry King’s spot Tuesday night at CNN with Oprah Winfrey as his first interview.

According to The Nielsen Company, the debut episode of “Piers Morgan Tonight” attracted 2.1 million viewers. The result tripled the average number of viewers of its predecessor “Larry King Live” which gathered 657,000 viewers during the fourth quarter of the show, until it ended in December after 25 years.

The Fox News program “Hannity” remained number one in Tuesday night’s ratings with an audience share of 2.3 million, following an interview with former Republican vice-presidential candidate and reality show host Sarah Palin.

The majority of critics said that Morgan's debut episode did not meet their expectations. Many were expecting to witness a different interview style from Morgan, and for him to ask Oprah more provocative questions.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, "The end result wasn't so much an interview as a chat, which fell flatter than people might have expected. It did, for all the world, seem like two self-important rich people talking to each other."

Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times described Morgan’s interview with the queen of talk show as “probably too timid.”

Morgan asked Oprah questions such as "how many times have you been properly in-love?" Oprah said that she said had her heartbroken twice but she refused to mention their names.

Oprah also told Morgan that she would not get married. The talk show queen explained, “I am a different kind of woman and I'm pretty sure that had I married, I wouldn’t have remained married because it takes a very different kind of person to put up with all of these.”

She said the reason why her relationship with Stedman works is that, “we each got to define ourselves in it and not in a traditional form. There’s nothing about it that’s traditional.”

Morgan’s interview with Oprah may not be as provocative as expected, but he was able to get Oprah to talk about her teen-age pregnancy, suicidal thoughts in the past and her stand on marriage.

Piers Morgan Tonight airs weeknights on CNN at 9 PM ET.