Kings: NBC Yanks Low-rated TV Series from Sunday Nights

As we predicted a few weeks ago, immediately following Kings’ less-than-stellar premiere, NBC has pulled the ambitious drama from its Sunday night timeslot.

Kings focuses on the fictional nation of Gilboa, a country that is very similar to our United States except that it’s ruled by a king, Silas Benjamin (Ian McShane). Based on the biblical tale of King David, the series features the talents of Christopher Egan, Susanna Thompson, Michael Patrick Crane, Allison Miller, Sebastian Stan, Eamonn Walker, Dylan Baker, Wes Studi, Joel Garland, Jason Antoon, Sarita Choudhury, and Macaulay Culkin.

The TV show’s two-hour premiere ratings failed to impress anyone with a fourth place showing of just 6.47 million viewers and a 1.6/4 rating/share in the desirable 18-49 demographic. The following week’s ratings were even worse with 4.62 million viewers and a 1.3/3 in the demo. Episode five, which aired on Sunday night, could only muster 3.64 million viewers and a 1.1/3.

Based on these weak numbers, the peacock network has opted to shift the remaining eight installments of Kings to Saturday nights at 8pm. Expectations are very low on that night and the networks typically just air reruns. It looks like NBC is committed to airing all existing installments of Kings but there’s little hope that it will be returning for a second year.

Effective April 12th, the network will fill the Sunday night timeslot with expanded editions of the Dateline newsmagazine. NBC execs believe it will serve as a better lead-in to Celebrity Apprentice which has been running from 9-11pm on Sundays.

Kings will begin running on Saturdays as of April 18th.