A few months ago the Shock Exchange heard about a new show on CNN featuring Charles Barkley and Gayle King. Barkley has a huge following on TNT where he covers the NBA. He also covers the NCAA tournament where he Kenny Smith and Clark Kellogg are huge draws. Kellogg was the most famous school boy basketball player from Cleveland prior to LeBron (the Shock Exchange digresses). Gayle King – Ms. Oprah Winfrey’s best friend – is a mainstay on CBS and has star power. On paper, a weekly show featuring “King Charles” sounded good. However, the Shock Exchange was always skeptical. Barkley is excellent when discussing sports – he never misses. Though Barkley did nailed the much ado about nothing over those stupid statues, he can be a train wreck when he discusses subjects other than sports.. Meanwhile, King is great at covering puff pieces in the morning that only plain vanilla Americans are interested in. How her skills will translate to nighttime television remains to be seen.
Below is how Variety described the concept of the weekly show:
The new weekly one-hour program will debut Wednesday, November 29, at 10 p.m., and will be co-anchored by the unlikely duo of Gayle King, who still has her long-running day job at rival CBS News, and Charles Barkley, the outspoken sportscaster who remains a key element in the NBA coverage provided by CNN’s parent, Warner Bros. Discovery. CNN executives are counting on the pair to have freewheeling conversations about the biggest stories in the news cycle. “King Charles” is viewed as a limited-run series that will last at least through the first quarter of next year.
This all seems like a recipe made for disaster. Will Barkley be as well-prepared for the topics on the show as he is with basketball? Will he be as acerbic and irreverent as he is on TNT? If not then the public may not take him seriously. The CBS morning show appears to be a ready-made audience for Gayle King. Does she have the personality and gravitas to hold an audience’s attention at night. We shall soon find out.
CNN has marketed “King Charles” as a show that will cover stories dominating the news cycle. That likely means it will cover the same stories everyone else is covering. This will make the show difficult to set itself apart. The Shock Exchange knows the one story “King Charles” and CNN are afraid to cover. It could also be the story that could save the show.
