• The Hollywood Reporter, Thursday, July 15, 2010 11:30 PM

Piers Morgan reportedly stands to make $5-6 million per year over the next three years if he takes Larry King's seat at CNN. The "America's Got Talent" judge is on the verge of signing a deal with the news network to take CNN's 9 p.m. slot. Morgan would keep his seat on "Got Talent" if he accepted the job, with his NBC duties having top priority, reports The Hollywood Reporter.

Last month, King announced that he would retire in November after hosting "Larry King Live" for 25 years. In an interview with Forbes, King said Tuesday that he would have preferred Ryan Seacrest landed the gig. "I've never watched 'America's Got Talent,' and I don't know if I'd recognize (Morgan) if he was walking down the street," he said.

Morgan comes with his own baggage. Made the youngest tab editor in the British journalism world at age 28, he had to leave his job as editor of the Daily Mirror in 2004 after the newspaper published photos purportedly of English soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners which turned out to be fake, says TampaBay.com, the Web site of The St. Petersburg Times. In hiring Morgan, the paper says CNN is taking a chance, passing up more conventional choices, such as "American Idol" host Ryan Seacrest and CNN Headline News host Joy Behar for a British celebrity most Americans know only as an insufferably overconfident reality TV star.

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