Kings has been dethroned. The critically-acclaimed yet viewer-challenged drama about a modern fictional take on the King Saul story from the Bible has lost its Sunday night timeslot. NBC announced today that Kings will be moving to Saturday nights at 8:00 pm starting on April 18, which essentially means it’s been canceled. Dateline, which was Kings’ lead-in, will be expanding to two hours.

In the four weeks since its debut, Kings, which stars Ian McShane, has gone from bad to worse in the ratings. The ambitious, creative series started out in fourth place for the night with a mere 6 million viewers and 1.6 in the 18-49 demographic. By this past Sunday’s episode it had dropped to a pitiful 3.6 million viewers and a 1.1 in the demo. Not even its strong showing on new media, such as iTunes where its latest episode is the most downloaded show, is enough to save it.

The move to Saturday night should somewhat placate the series’ small but devoted audience. It’s better than being yanked unceremoniously from the air entirely. This way, viewers won’t have to wait and see if NBC burns off the remaining episodes online or makes fans shell out money for the DVDs.

Yesterday, we took a look at the mid-season premieres ABC has lined-up this month. Here’s a look at what we can expect from NBC.

Southland is a new cop drama about Ben Sherman (Ben McKenzie), a rookie cop who’s being shown the ropes by his partner, John Cooper (Michael Cudlitz). The young cop struggles with the cost that comes with his new profession, like the difficulty he has with shooting a man dead on his first day. The show has a perfect time slot, it will take over ER’s Thrusday night position on April 9th, which is fitting since its executive producer, John Wells, was also the executive producer of ER.

Amy Poehler’s much hyped new show, Parks and Recreation also premieres on April 9th. Parks and Recreation is a mockumnetary about a local government public works office brought to you by the same folks who are running The Office. Critics love it, positioning Poehler to be the next Tina Fey, but hopefully Amy will have better luck finding an audience than her friend Tina has had with 30 Rock.

NBC’s third mid-season show is their biggest gamble. Kings premiered last night to so-so ratings. The epic drama is set in an alternate-universe monarchy in which a peasant prince is groomed to become the king. Fans of epic tales, like Battlestar Galactica, will most likely love Kings but the rest of us will probably pass it by.

Fox is premiering yest another prime-time animated series, Sit Down, Shut Up, about a high school as seen through the eyes of the demented teachers and administrators who run it. The twist in Sit Down, Shut Up is that the characters are animated but the background is live action. Even if that doesn’t sound appealing, The stellar cast makes up for it. Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, Kristin Chenoweth, Cheri Oteri, and Tom Kenny all provide voices.