CNN‘s debut of King Charles, the new show featuring Gayle King and Charles Barkley, premiered to 510,000 viewers, according to Nielsen fast national early numbers.
The show’s total viewing audience was well behind rivals: Fox News’ Gutfeld! topped the time slot with 1.97 million viewers, and MSNBC averaged 1.62 million with The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell.
The CNN show, however, did edge out MSNBC in the 25-54 demo, averaging 139,000, compared to 132,000 for MSNBC’s The Last Word and 257,000 for Fox News’ Gutfeld!
King Charles is a once-a-week 10 p.m. ET show on Wednesday evening, and the first show guests included Steve Kerr. The show was part of then-CNN CEO Chris Licht’s strategy of programming primetime with star names. Licht was let go from the network in June, but CNN went forward with the King-Barkley show, which is a limited series that will run through early next year.
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CNN Newsnight with Abby Phillip, which airs in the time slot the rest of the weeknights, averaged 481,000 viewers in November.
The numbers are from Nielsen via CNN and MSNBC.
