TV personalities Gayle King and Charles Barkley will headline a new primetime weekly CNN show, "King Charles," debuting in the fall, the network announced Saturday as it tries to engineer a turnaround amid tumbling ratings.
CNN chairman and CEO Chris Licht said in a statement that the show "will be an exciting new way we are delivering culturally relevant programming and unique perspectives to our audience, from two incredibly dynamic personalities."
Licht said King will continue to anchor CBS Mornings, and former NBA star Barkley will continue his current role at Warner Bros. Discovery Sports.
Appearing on TNT to discuss the new show, the duo said they would talk about politics but that the show would not have a political slant.
"We don't want to say, 'We're a liberal, conservative, Republican, Democrat,'" Barkley said. "That's one of the things that's already ruined television in general."
Cable news ratings are down across the board compared to 2022, when Russia's invasion of Ukraine was fresh in the news. CNN's dip has been most dramatic — 61% in primetime in March.
CNN is a year into new corporate management with Warner Bros. Discovery, which hired ex-CBS producer Licht to run the network.
Licht's revamp of "CNN This Morning" was plagued with bad publicity in the wake of co-host Don Lemon's ill-advised reference to a woman's "prime" years, which offended many.
Harvey Weinstein hit with new sex crime charge in New York
Harvey Weinstein pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a new sex crime charge in New York, as he awaits retrial in his landmark #MeToo case.
Details of the new allegations were not immediately available. He was charged with committing a criminal sex act.
The jailed ex-movie mogul has long maintained that any sexual activity was consensual.
Prosecutors revealed last week that Weinstein had been indicted on additional sex crime charges that weren't part of the case that led to his now-overturned 2020 conviction. But the new indictment was sealed until his arraignment.
Prosecutors have said that the grand jury heard evidence of up to three alleged assaults — two in hotels in the Tribeca neighborhood and one at a lower Manhattan residential building. The purported incidents took place from the mid-2000s to 2016, prosecutors said.
But it's not clear whether any of those allegations underlie the new indictment.
While bracing for the new charges, Weinstein also is awaiting retrial after New York state's highest court this spring overturned his 2020 conviction on rape and sexual assault charges involving two women. The high court, called the Court of Appeals, ordered a new trial, which is tentatively scheduled to begin Nov. 12.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the then-trial judge unfairly allowed testimony against him based on allegations that were not part of the case. That judge's term expired in 2022, and he is no longer on the bench.
Prosecutors have said they'll seek to fold the new charges into the retrial, but Weinstein's lawyers say it should be a separate case.
Weinstein, who also was convicted in 2022 in a Los Angeles rape case, remains behind bars while awaiting his New York retrial.
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