The premiere of King Charles on CNN was deemed a ratings flop last week, but Charles Barkley doesn’t subscribe to the numbers.
After being teased in February, formally announced in April, and confirmed in August, CNN’s newest primetime show featuring Barkley and Gayle King finally debuted last week. And despite nearly ten months of anticipation, the buildup wasn’t enough to generate much ratings success, assuming you believe Nielsen is capable of measuring audiences. Barkley does not.
“This is to my people at CNN, my team who puts the King Charles show together,” Barkley told Ernie Johnson on their podcast, The Steam Room. “An article came out that our ratings weren’t great…but I want to tell my team, man, these Nielsen people are the biggest clowns in the world. Name me one person you know with a Nielsen box?”
As measured by Nielsen, the premiere of King Charles averaged 501,000 viewers in its 10 p.m. ET timeslot on CNN last Wednesday night. The number was slightly ahead of the 474,000 November average for CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip, which usually airs in that window, but paled in comparison to the network’s cable news competitors, Fox News and MSNBC. But again, those numbers don’t matter to Barkley.
“These Nielsen people try to say our ratings weren’t great, but we won a certain demographic. Hey man, to my team, f*** them,” Barkley ranted. “Don’t you worry about what people tell you about your ratings? Nobody knows what people are watching. They don’t! You got a group of people who get to dictate who gets hired and fired, and that’s the part that sucks about the Nielsen ratings.”
Barkley attempted to squash any idea that he might just be rankled by King Charles’ less-than-impressive debut, claiming he made the same argument 20 years ago. “Let me repeat that: I said the same thing about the Nielsen people when I was on the No. 1 show on TNT. They have no idea who’s watching Inside the NBA!” Barkley insisted.
“I just want to tell my team, guys, do your best,” Barkley continued. “That’s all you do. In anything you do in life, just do your best. Because there are a lot of systems in place that make no sense. The Nielsen’s are at the top of my list. But I really just want to tell my team…I just want to say thank you. And f*** those Nielsen people.”
Barkley might not subscribe to Nielsen’s audience measurement systems, but CNN and its advertisers do. The system is imperfect, but networks will value the information in determining whether a show deserves a second season. And maybe even more so for King Charles, considering the show was spawned by Chris Licht, CNN’s former CEO, who was fired in June.
