NEW YORK — Early last June, CNN celebrated 25 years of “Larry King Live” with a week of shows whose A-list guests included President Obama, LeBron James, Bill Gates and Lady Gaga. It was hyped to the hilt and suitably eventful, even as King and Lady Gaga regarded each other with the bemusement of a human encountering an alien life form.
Then, at the end of June, King suddenly announced he was retiring from his show — a weeknight fixture at 9 p.m. Eastern since June 1, 1985. He told viewers, “It’s time to hang up my nightly suspenders.”
After Thursday’s edition, King will indeed hang it up, suspenders and all.
‘Larry King Live’ |
» When: 9 p.m., Thursday |
» Channel: CNN |
» Info: cnn.com |
The lineup for this farewell hour should be stellar, though no names have been announced. The mood should be spirited and flowing with emotion.
But until now, it’s been an oddly subdued leave-taking. The promotion machine at a network can make noise over most anything. Or try. CNN isn’t bothering. Having paid King his tribute last June, before he even said he would be stepping down, CNN now is treating him as a lame-duck star, a chapter the network is rushing to move past.
The focus is on Piers Morgan, whom CNN named as the new guy in September. It is busily promoting his January debut. Morgan, a 45-year-old British journalist and TV personality known mainly in the United States as a judge on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” promises that “Piers Morgan Tonight” will be “exciting and slightly dangerous.” He is the future — or so CNN hopes.
King, who has never been exciting or dangerous (nor tried to be), is clearly seen by CNN as yesterday’s news.
Sure, it would be easy to argue that the 77-year-old King waited too long to hang up those suspenders.
Once the leader in cable TV news, he now ranks third in his time slot behind Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. His show was seen by 700,000 viewers this year, less than half the nightly audience his peak year, 1998, when “Larry King Live” drew 1.64 million viewers. As recently as 2003, he was averaging 1.54 million.
Wide-eyed and nonconfrontational, King’s regular-guy approach to interviewing feels dated in an era of edgy, pushy or loaded questioning by other hosts.
King’s famous avoidance of overpreparation — he has always opted to approach each interviewee fresh, unburdened by too many facts — has begun to catch up with him in recent years. His occasional flubs have made him seem out of touch. Or worse. (A prime example from three years ago found King asking Jerry Seinfeld if he had voluntarily left his sitcom or been canceled by his network, which, as everybody else knows, had been ready to hand him the keys to the treasury to stay. “I was the No. 1 show in television, Larry,” replied Seinfeld with a flabbergasted look. “Do you know who I am?”)
After Thursday’s show, he’s flat-out calling it a day. The points of light that form his dotted world-map backdrop will be dark.
He has estimated that he’s conducted 50,000 interviews during his half-century-long broadcasting career.