Larry King, whose slumping ratings have been the subject of cable news chatter in recent weeks, celebrated his 25th anniversary at CNN last week – and came out of the Memorial Day Weekend swinging.
A string of high-profile guests – Lady Gaga, Bill Gates, Barack Obama and LeBron James – helped boost King’s ratings, with a 63 percent bump in nightly 25-to-54-year-old viewers (302,000) compared to his year-to-date average.
That figure topped MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s average for the week (261,000) in the demo – the first time King has managed to do that since January. Fox News’ Sean Hannity (585,000) led both Maddow and King in the demo during the 9:00 p.m. hour.
Overall, Hannity averaged 2.2 million total viewers, followed by Maddow (984,000) and King (824,000).
The LeBron interview even drew 944,000 viewers on Friday – and this despite CNN announcing the main news nugget (James claiming the Cleveland Cavaliers have “an edge” to sign him) on Tuesday, the day King conducted the interview at James’ home.
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