Gayle King and Charles Barkley’s CNN series has come to an end. “King Charles” aired its final episode on CNN last week, with both King and Barkley giving their thanks for the series.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, King and Barkley expressed their appreciation for each other in the episode. “I will say this: I have loved working with you and something tells me, Charles, this will not be the last time that we’re working together,” King said.
Barkley replied, “Call me, Gayle,” and King then addressed the viewers. “We will see you the next time whenever we see you,” she said. “Thanks so much for being with us for the past six months. We had a blast.”
According to a CNN spokesperson, the series was never meant to last long. “’King Charles’ has come to the end of its limited run as we announced when it launched last fall and was a great addition to CNN’s lineup,” the spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the audience was “the youngest, most affluent, and most diverse” in the show’s cable news time period.
As theGrio previously reported, CNN announced the series in April 2023. Then-CEO Chris Licht, referred to it as “an exciting new way we are delivering culturally relevant programming and unique perspectives to our audience, from two incredibly dynamic personalities.”
As The Hollywood Reporter wrote, the premiere ratings for the series were far from stellar. The premiere drew only 501,00 viewers according to same-day Nielsen ratings, finishing “a distant third among the biggest cable news channels in total viewers and didn’t really moving the needle from CNN’s recent averages in the hour.”