NBC pulls ‘Kings’ from Sundays

NBC is pulling Kings from Sunday nights, yanking the struggling allegorical drama after four episodes.

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.