TV Jots

But Saturdays Are, Apparently

Ouch! That’s the sound of a TV show dying.

The big news making the rounds of the entertainment Internets today is NBC’s decision to yank the so-called “David and Goliath” drama Kings from its 8pm ET, Sunday-night time period in favor of an 8pm death slot on Saturdays, effectively immediately.

As a result, the next new episode of Kings will surface on April 18, and the show’s freshman run is scheduled to conclude on June 13, with no fresh installment on June 6.

The show’s replacement? For now, super-sized, two-hour editions of the long-running newsmagazine Dateline, airing from 7pm to 9pm.

Before the forced move to Saturdays, the four episodes of Kings that debuted posted increasingly poorer ratings, ranging from the premiere’s 6.4 million total viewers and 1.6/5 rating/share for the 18–49 demographic to last Sunday’s downright embarrassing 3.63 million viewers and 1.1/3.

What a drastic decline for a series that has enjoyed generally favorable reviews. The situation kind of makes it clearer why NBC is giving up on scripted programming to air Jay Leno from 10pm–11pm on weekdays, even if that approach doesn’t seem like much of a solution to the network’s woes.