CNN broadcasting legend Larry King calls it quits
Larry King, the iconic TV interviewer, will step aside from hosting of his prime time CNN show later this year, he said Tuesday.
King, 76, made the announcement with a short posting to his Twitter account, citing his desire to spend more time with his wife and young children.
“I want to share some personal news with you. 25 years ago, I sat across this table from New York Governor Mario Cuomo for the first broadcast of Larry King Live. Now, decades later, I talked to the guys here at CNN and I told them I would like to end Larry King Live, the nightly show, this fall and CNN has graciously accepted, giving me more time for my wife and I to get to the kids' little league games,” King wrote.
“I'm incredibly proud that we recently made the Guinness Book of World Records for having the longest running show with the same host in the same time slot. With this chapter closing I'm looking forward to the future and what my next chapter will bring, but for now it's time to hang up my nightly suspenders.”
The idea to step aside came to him after he completed his weeklong 25th anniversary celebration, he said.
“I'm thinking to myself, I've done 50,000 interviews,” he said. “I'm never going to top this.”
Asked whom he wants to replace him, King cited “American Idol” host Ryan Seacrest. “He's curious, he's interesting, he's likable,” King said. “If he has a great interest in politics, I would recommend him. But I'm sure there's a ton of people who could do it. Come on. It's Q and A.”
King's decision followed months of media speculation about his future as his ratings declined.
King was hosting a radio talk show when CNN founder Ted Turner persuaded him in 1985 to try his interviewing skills on cable TV.
His gentle but persistent interview style drew big-name guests, and “Larry King Live” became a place for major personalities to break news. Billionaire Ross Perot used the show to announce he was running for US president in 1992. And the show was the setting for the historic NAFTA debate between then-Vice President Al Gore and Perot in 1993.
King, who was initially based in Washington, became a mandatory stop for politicians. Over his career, he conducted sit-down interviews with every US president since Richard Nixon.
His programme was sometimes a place of real-time diplomacy. In 1995, he hosted a programme on the Middle East Peace process with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, King Hussein of Jordan and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.
His suspenders, large glasses and vintage desk microphone are as recognisable as the countless celebrities lined up to have an intimate chat with King while the world listened in.
And there have been a lot of guests, including Marlon Brando, Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Paul McCartney, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, L. Ron Hubbard, Madonna and Martin Luther King, Jr.
King says that Nelson Mandela was the most extraordinary person he has met.
In his autobiography, King confessed that he never plans a question, that he likes to be surprised by the answers. He says he asks his interview subjects to explain things.
“All I do is ask questions,” he wrote. “Short, simple questions.”
Source: CNN
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