Charles Barkley doesn’t appear to be a fan of his Warner Bros. Discovery bosses right now. He isn’t a fan of the way they handled his CNN show. And he certainly isn’t a fan of the way they’ve seemingly botched NBA negotiations for TNT.
After torching WBD executives for allegedly screwing up TNT’s 35-year partnership with the NBA, Barkley went off on his bosses again for a lack of clarity surrounding King Charles. Barkley isn’t making new episodes of his CNN show with co-host Gayle King, but he still doesn’t know whether King Charles was canceled.
The New York Post reported King Charles was canceled when its run ended in April. However, six weeks later, Barkley claims that information was never relayed to him. Barkley joined the latest episode of The Mike Missanelli Podcast where he spoke about the status of King Charles on CNN, a show he initially agreed to do as a sort of favor to help the cable news network. CNN and TNT share the same parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery.
“You know the type of boneheads I work with? First of all, it wasn’t canceled,” Barkley insisted. “They haven’t told us we were canceled. That’s how stupid these people are. I read the articles that we were canceled and I was like, ‘We weren’t canceled.’ I was always only going to do that for a short time and then I was going to go back to the NBA… This is how boneheaded these people are that I work with, I’m like, ‘Wait a minute, were we canceled? They didn’t tell me that.’ I was going to do a short little window and I was going to go back to the NBA.”
“That just shows you how full of sh*t the whole thing is with CNN,” Barkley ranted. “We had new people take over and we’re in disarray… If we were canceled they should at least give us the decency of calling to tell us we were canceled. But we haven’t been canceled.”
At the helm of the “new people” who took over and drove the company into “disarray” is CEO and president of Warner Bros. Discovery, David Zaslav. Barkley was initially sold on the idea of a CNN show by the network’s former CEO Chris Licht, who was relieved of his duties less than one year into Zaslav’s tenure. CNN still moved forward with King Charles in the network’s post-Licht era.
The show succeeded in going viral on social media several times, but it was a ratings failure on linear TV. Whether the show was canceled for being a ratings failure or just ran its course per Barkley’s schedule, however, is apparently still up for debate. Regardless of the reasoning, Barkley seems bothered by the minimal communication.
