It’s official: Kings is yanked.

We knew this was coming, but I’m still upset about it…

Sunday’s Kings episode was seen by 3.6 million viewers and received a 1.1 rating among adults 18-49. Yet Dateline had a 1.5 rating in its half hour leading into Kings. NBC suspects an expanded Dateline will provide a better lead-in for 9 p.m.’s Celebrity Apprentice, which has seen some audience erosion in recent weeks that might be attributed to Kings.

The remaining eight episodes of Kings will air on Saturday nights at 8 p.m. starting April 18.

As I said before, I think Kings is great TV, and it’s a crying shame that 3.6 million viewers isn’t enough to support it. That kind of viewership on AMC or HBO would be seen as fantastic. The network model is broken if a show like Kings can have literally millions of fans and still fail. It’s particularly insulting that Kings is getting cancelled in part because of its negative influence on the Celebrity Apprentice numbers — the show creators should be given a medal for that!

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On April 7, 2009, casey said:

I didn’t like this show at all (especially the horrible soundtrack), but I get what you’re saying about viewership on premium cable v. network.

i worry that if ratings figures for ad penetration is the sole metric for “success” at network, we’ll soon see any and all high-production content replaced by vapid reality and variety programming.

I want an on-demand subscription model now. No more cable tiers. Unfortunately, the networks will probably even abandon Hulu pretty soon.

Haven’t they run out of feet to shoot off yet?
On April 7, 2009, Greg Giordano said:

DAMMIT. I really like this show. Unfortunately, there isn’t a president for NBC to try to offload or co-produce this show on cable-tv channel like an AMC, etc. Of course there will be the obligatory “save the king” campaign- but with network TV business practices being what they are- fat chance of it working. It’s nice to know that NBC is more than willing to throw money at shit like BIONIC WOMAN and KNIGHT RIDER, while a show that actually is original and worth supporting and cultivating gets thrown into the incinerator of “failed” shows. Now that Ian McShane and Timothy Olyphant are free, can anyone get Milch and HBO to make nice and produce a DEADWOOD finale?
On April 7, 2009, Jayne Kennedy said:

I think they are airing them on sci-fi network now, and maybe that is where they will ditch out the rest of the episodes. I did think this latest one was more pretentious than portenous, but Ian McShane can always sell it–only this time, many around him seemed out of their depth. The constant close-ups bugged me too. The gay son chews the scenery and the music annoys, but the production values are great. Now I am hoping NBC doesn’t kill “Life.” And how long will “Southland” last if NBC is being so damn twitchy?! Will anything good survive the Lenofication of NBC prime time? At least they finally put ER out of it’s misery..