Gayle King’s Future Uncertain As ‘Woke’ Morning Show Tanks

Not even a multi-billion-dollar merger may be able to save Gayle King’s career at CBS following disastrous new ratings for her “woke” morning show, putting it in the crosshairs of executives seeking to stamp out DEI from the network’s daily lineup.

King, 70, commands top dollars after more than a dozen years at CBS. But despite helming the flagship “CBS Morning” show since 2012, King’s brand of left-wing agitprop is no longer sitting well with CBS decision makers.

Those close to the feud say King and other legacy talents have “dug in” to resist C-level efforts to wring “woke” programming out of CBS News.

For now, King appears to have a defender in George Cheeks, the co-CEO of CBS’s parent company, Paramount, who is rumored to become the leader of CBS following Skydance’s acquisition of the network. Cheeks has, for years, laid down diversity, equity, and inclusion mandates across his scope of responsibilities, and King has been all too happy to oblige.

That in turn has alienated Americans who no longer tune into “CBS Morning,” insiders told the NY Post. One source said that King and her top producer, Shawna Thomas, have set an aggressive “agenda” for the coming year that is about to run headlong into a buzzsaw of reforms happening far above her head.

“The audience doesn’t want woke. It doesn’t like progressive and provocative bookings,” one of the sources told The Post. “The morning show audience wants optimism and cheer and joy and what they were producing is at odds with audience expectations.”

They singled out King’s March 26 interview with “RuPaul’s Drag Race” winner Bob the Drag Queen, who was on tour promoting his first novel, titled “Harriet Tubman: Live in Concert.”

A CBS webpage described the novel as a “gender-bending story where the historic icon appears in modern-day America to tell her story through a hip-hop album.”

Such interviews may have been all well and good while “CBS Mornings” hauled in cash and key advertising demographics, but both have been siphoned off by competitors in recent months. King’s show is now regularly sitting in last place within the morning news circuit, and her average audience has slipped below two million for the first time in history.

Crucially, King has managed to maintain just 20% to 30% of her key 25-to-54-year-old audience members since this time last year, according to Nielsen.

The morning show host just nabbed a contract extension between $13 million and $15 million that runs through next May, a well-placed source told the NY Post. That’s the same month that CBS pulled the plug on Stephen Colbert’s late-night show and his annual $15 million contract.

Given her plummeting viewership, it’s clear that King won’t be offered the same cushy contract if she’s offered another at all, the source said.