Hilton gives King Best Ratings in Two Years

By Marisa Guthrie -- Broadcasting & Cable, 6/28/2007 2:27:00 PM

Paris Hilton’s first post-lock-up television interview gave CNN’s Larry King Live its most-watched program in almost two years. More than 3.2 million total viewers (1.48 million of them in news’ target adults 25-54 demographic) tuned in Wednesday to watch Hilton muse on prison life – she ate bologna sandwiches for lunch and chatted with fellow inmates through a grate in her cell.

That’s about triple King’s year-to-date average of 1.06 million viewers (January through the week that ended June 24, 2007) and a far cry better than he did on Tuesday (1.47 million viewers) when he had surviving Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr on the show.

The Hilton interview was bested by a King telecast about an emergency Jet Blue airplane landing during Hurricane Rita on Sept. 21, 2005 (4.86 million viewers and 1.87 million in the 25-54 demo). But Hilton edged out Star Jones, who pulled in 2.98 million viewers (939,000 in the 25-54 demo) when she appeared June 29, 2006 in the wake of her very public dust-up with Barbara Walters over her View contract.

On Friday, filmmaker Michael Moore appears on King to talk about his latest documentary Sicko. CNN will re-run King’s Beatles and Hilton interviews Friday at 7 p.m. (ET) and 8 p.m. (ET), respectively.