Kings will be replaced with another hour of Dateline, which will now run for two hours starting at 7 p.m.

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.

The loss is a real shame because, as nearly every TV critic pointed out, NBC took a chance here on an imaginative idea with a strong cast. Kings wasn’t a cynical programming move. More than most shows launched this season, Kings was a drama everybody wanted to succeed. Some may carp on NBC for airing the show on Sundays at 8 p.m. — it’s a weak slot for the network — but if the show was really working you would not have seen its ratings sharply decline from its debut.