By In 2022, following scandals New Conservative Post wrote, “CNN is dying, and its new management has been discussing ways to fire much of its hyperpartisan and woke staff that has been blamed for its downfall from “the most trusted name in news.”
The original cable news network has been shedding viewers, coming in last in ratings of US cable news networks for months.
One hope for the network was to bring in Charles Barkley and Gayle King to create a new talk show, but even two of television’s biggest stars couldn’t provide a lifeline to the ailing news network.
The reign of King Charles is officially over, writes The Wall Street Journal.
The show was the brainchild of former CNN Chief Executive Chris Licht, who left the network in June after a chaotic tenure of a little over a year. Another one of Licht’s initiatives, a revamped morning program, was scrapped earlier this year.
“King Charles,” which ran at 10 p.m. on Wednesdays, was designed to run through the spring. A CNN spokeswoman described the show as “a great addition to CNN’s lineup,” with a young and diverse audience.
CNN said the show was watched by about half a million people on average.
Both King and Barkley are hypervisible elsewhere on TV. Barkley is one of the hosts of the popular “Inside the NBA” program on TNT—which like CNN is owned by Warner Bros. Discovery—while King co-hosts “CBS Mornings,” the morning program of Paramount Global’s CBS.
It’s hard not to understand why the show didn’t take off:
The Daily Caller noted that King Charles failed to transfer the former basketball star’s popularity on TNT to CNN.
“The pair’s ratings hit a steep decline after an already less-than-stellar debut in November 2023. The show premiered with an audience of 500,000 and 139,000 in the key 25-54 demographic, according to Nielsen data obtained by the New York Post. It was the network’s worst prime-time weeknight series debut in over a decade, according to the Post.
The show was announced as a limited series in November and was always set to end some time in spring, a CNN spokesperson told the Daily Caller.
Numbers continued to drop, with a January episode failing to even crack 100,000 viewers in the key demo, the Post reported.
In total, the show’s 14 episodes averaged 459,000 viewers and 106,000 in the key demo, according to the Post. They were totally crushed by time slot competitors, including Fox News’ ‘Gutfeld!’ which raked in more than quadruple the viewership that Barkley’s ratings disaster did.”
Somewhere, Shaquille O’neal is chuckling.
In a statement Monday, the cable news channel confirmed the show was coming off the air, saying “King Charles has come to the end of its limited run as we announced when it launched last fall and was a great addition to CNN’s lineup, with the youngest, most affluent, and most diverse P2+ audience in its cable news time period.”
The show lasted six months.
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