Piers Morgan, the bad-cop judge on the hit NBC show 'America's Got Talent,' is poised to take over Larry King's coveted time slot on CNN, a move smoothed by an imminent deal between the media giants that own the channels, NBC Universal and Turner Broadcasting. This week, NBC signaled that it was willing to share Morgan with CNN. That decision frees Morgan to negotiate directly with CNN, and according to three people involved in the delicate maneuvering between the companies, a contract could be signed within a few days. If completed, the deal would vault Morgan, a native of Britain, into the top tier of television interviewers, alongside people like Oprah Winfrey, Barbara Walters and Katie Couric. It will also demonstrate that CNN thinks there is still room in prime time for long-form interviews with public servants and starlets, a stark contrast to the partisan pundits on its higher-rated rivals, Fox News and MSNBC. King announced two weeks ago that he was ending 'Larry King Live' this fall, creating a huge vacancy for CNN. Morgan had been rumored as a replacement even before then, a prospect that baffled many people inside CNN. But what many people in the United States might not know is that Morgan, 45, is an A-list interviewer in Britain, and he has essentially been rehearsing for CNN for the past year by hosting 'Piers Morgan Life Stories,' a series of well-received and high-rated interviews with figures like Gordon Brown and Simon Cowell, on the British network ITV. A former creature of Fleet Street who edited The Daily Mirror for a decade, has all manner of critics, including NBC viewers who dislike his mean-Brit persona and television critics who despise his chilling self-confidence. But Cowell, his close friend, has demonstrated on 'American Idol' that being disliked can be a shortcut to fame and fortune. 'Almost every other U.K. TV import has been hugely successful,' said Tammy Haddad, a former executive producer of 'Larry King Live' who now runs a media consulting company. For CNN, Morgan's role on the talent show could be a promotional platform to attract desperately needed younger viewers -- or it could be a source of awkwardness for a channel that calls itself 'the most trusted name in news.' CNN has been trying to rebuild its low-rated prime-time lineup. Last month, it said it had hired Eliot Spitzer, the former New York governor, and Kathleen Parker, a newspaper columnist, as the hosts of an 8 p.m. discussion show. Now it needs to rebuild the 9 p.m. slot King is vacating. 