CNN’s “King Charles,” the new weekly show hosted by Gayle King and Charles Barkley, flopped in its debut broadcast, ranking among the lowest-rated CNN primetime show premieres over the past decade.
The long-hyped premiere of the new weekly primetime series, which aired Wednesday at 10 pm, drew just 501,000 viewers, according to same-day Nielsen ratings.
It finished a distant third among the biggest cable news channels in total viewers, ranking as the smallest of any of CNN’s primetime debuts this year.
“King Charles” was the brainchild of Chris Licht, the former CNN CEO, who was brought in to revamp the network’s struggling daytime and primetime lineups.
But Licht was ousted after a scathing magazine profile alienated staffers and key senior figures at the network who called for his head.
Licht’s replacement, Mark Thompson, has yet to announce any major changes as CNN continues to trail Fox News and MSNBC in the ratings.
“King Charles” was meant to take on a late night vibe, pairing “CBS Mornings” anchor King and NBA Hall of Famer and analyst Barkley to discus the news and culture while taking calls.
The pre-taped show on Wednesday, included a jokey call from Barkley’s “Inside the NBA” co-host Shaquille O’Neal, which wasn’t enough to lift ratings.
The show came in well behind MSNBCs “Last Word With Lawrence ODonnell” with 1.6 million total viewers, although it attracted 139,000 viewers in the key demographic of adults aged 25 to 54 versus O’Donnell’s show, which brought in just 132,000 demo viewers.
Ratings for “Gutfeld!” on Fox News totaled 2.2 million and 241,000 viewers in the demo.
CNN has been trying to dig itself out of last place and has rejiggered its primetime lineup this year with new hosts at 9 pm, 10 pm and 11 pm slots.
“King Charles” wasn’t able to move the needle, however, trailing a series of notable CNN primetime premieres over the years. They include “Laura Coates Live” and “NewsNight”–both of which debuted in October– with 535,000 and 645,00 total viewers, respectively.
It also trailed “The Source with Kaitlan Collins,” which premiered at 9 pm in July with 540,000 viewers.
Looking back, “King Charles” had a smaller audience than Don Lemon’s primetime show, which garnered 944,000 total viewers when it debuted in May 2021, Chris Cuomo’s 2017 primetime show with 1.5 million viewers and the 2011 premiere of “Erin Burnett Outfront” with 535,000 viewers.
A rep from CNN did not comment specifically on “King Charles’” lackluster debut, but said the show “performed competitively well in the demo, which has been CNNs general trend.”
The rep also noted thatKing Charleshad the youngest median viewer age at 67 of any 10 pm cable news show Wednesday. Fox News had a median age of68, while MSNBCs median viewer in that hour was 76.
Canada’s new prime minister, Mark Carney, once said recreating a virtual global gold standard like Bitcoin “would be a criminal act of monetary amnesia.”
AVONDALE, Ariz. — Christopher Bell became the first NASCAR Cup Series driver to win three straight races in the NextGen car, holding off Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Denny Hamlin by 0.049 seconds to win the second-closest race in Phoenix Raceway history Sunday.
Bell started 11th in the 312-mile race after winning at Atlanta and Circuit of America the previous two weeks. The JGR driver took the lead out of the pits on a caution and stayed out front on two late restarts to become the first driver to win three straight races since Kyle Larson in 2021.
The second restart led to some tense moments between Bell and Hamlin — enough to make their team owner feel a bit queasy.
“I was ready to upchuck,” JGR Racing owner Joe Gibbs said.
Bell became the fourth driver in Cup Series history to win three times in the first four races — and the first since Kevin Harvick in 2018. The last Cup Series driver to win four straight races was Jimmie Johnson in 2007.
“We’ve had four races this year, put ourselves in position in all four and managed to win three, which is a pretty remarkable batting average — something that will be hard to maintain, I believe,” Bell’s crew chief Adam Stevens said.
The Phoenix race was the first since Richmond last year to give teams two sets of option tires. The option red tires have much better grip, but start to fall off after about 35 laps, creating an added strategic element.
A handful of racers went to the red tires early — Joey Logano and Ryan Preece among them — and it paid off with runs to the lead before they fell back.
Bell was among those who had a set of red tires left for the final stretch and used it to his advantage, pulling away from Hamlin on a restart with 17 laps left.
Hamlin pulled alongside Bell over the final two laps after the last restart and the two bumped a couple of times before rounding into the final two turns. Bell barely stayed ahead of Hamlin, crossing the checkered flag with a wobble for his 12th career Cup Series win. He led 105 laps.
“It worked out about as opposite as I could have drawn it up in my head,” Bell said. “But the races that are contested like that, looking back, are the ones that mean the most to you.”
Said Hamlin: “I kind of had position on the 20, but I knew he was going to ship it in there. We just kind of ran out of race track there.”
Katherine Legge, who became the first woman to race on the Cup Series since Danica Patrick at the Daytona 500 seven years ago, didn’t get off to a great start and finished 30th.
Fighting a tight car, Legge got loose coming out of Turn 2 and spun her No. 78 Chevrolet, forcing her to make a pit stop. She dropped to the back of the field and had a hard time making up ground before bumping another car and spinning again on Lap 215, taking out Daniel Suarez with her.
“We made some changes to the car overnight and they were awful,” Legge said. “I was just hanging on to it.”
Logano, who started on the front row in his first race at Phoenix Raceway since capturing his third Cup Series at the track last fall, fell to the back of the field after a mistake on an early restart.
Trying to get a jump on Byron, Logano barely dipped his No. 22 Ford below the yellow line at the start/finish. NASCAR officials reviewed the restart and forced the Team Penske driver to take a pass through on pit road as the entire field passed him on the track.
“No way,” Logano said on his radio. “That’s freakin’ ridiculous.”
Logano twice surged to the lead after switching to the red tires, but started falling back on the primary tires following a restart. He finished 13th.
Preece took an early gamble by going to the red option tires and it paid off with a run from 33rd to third. The RFK Racing driver dropped back as the tires wore off, but went red again following a caution with about 90 laps left and surged into the lead.
Preece went back to the primary tires with 42 laps to go and started dropping back, finishing 15th.
The series heads to Las Vegas Motor Speedway next weekend.
Bitcoin fell on Monday as volatility in the price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency continues following an executive order signed by President Donald Trump to create a strategic bitcoin reserve for the United States.
Bitcoin was trading at $81,712, down over 5% but off earlier lows, at 9:42 a.m. Singapore time, according to Coin Metrics.
The reserve will be funded by coins that have been seized in criminal and civil forfeiture cases and there are no plans for the U.S. government to buy more bitcoin. After the strategic reserve announcement last Thursday, crypto prices declined as investors were disappointed it wasn’t a more aggressive program.
Other cryptocurrency prices also dropped on Monday. Both ether and XRP were down about 7.5% at around 9:43 a.m. Singapore time.
Some investors, however, said the move to establish a reserve was bullish in the long-term.
“I absolutely think the market has this wrong,” Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise Asset Management, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Monday. “The market is short-term disappointed” that the government didn’t say it was immediately going to start acquiring 100,000 or 200,000 bitcoin, he added.
Hougan pointed towards comments on X from White House Crypto and AI Czar David Sacks, who said the U.S. would look for “budget-neutral strategies for acquiring additional bitcoin, provided that those strategies have no incremental costs on American taxpayers.”
“I think the right question to ask is: did this executive order make it more likely that in the future, bitcoin will be a geopolitically important currency or asset? Will other governments look to follow the U.S.’s lead and build their own strategic reserve? And to me, the answer to that is emphatically yes,” Hougan said.
“The reason that questions matters is that’s the question that determines if bitcoin is $80,000 a coin or $1 million a coin.”
Hougan called the decline in crypto prices a “short-term setback.”
“I think the market will soon find its footing and realize that actually this is incredibly bullish long term for this asset and for crypto as a whole,” he said.
