Larry King Show

The Larry King Show was a radio talk show hosted by Larry King which aired on the Mutual Broadcasting System from 1978 to 1994. A typical show consisted of King interviewing a guest, then taking phone calls from listeners for the guest, and then taking phone calls on any topic.^[1] In 1982 the show won a Peabody Award.^[2]

King interviewing Vladimir Putin

Origin

In 1978, King went from a local show in Florida to a national show, inheriting the nightly talk show slot on the Mutual Broadcasting System, broadcast coast-to-coast, that had been "Long John" Nebel's until his death, and had been pioneered by Herb Jepko.^[3] One reason King got the Mutual job is that he had once been an announcer at WGMA-AM in Hollywood, Florida, which was then owned by C. Edward Little. Little went on to become president of Mutual and he hired King as Nebel's replacement. King's Mutual show debuted in Miami on January 30, 1978, where King's first guest was football coach Don Shula. The show soon moved to Mutual's studios near Washington, D.C.^[4] and it developed a devoted audience.^[5]

Show format

Mutual broadcast the show live Monday through Friday from midnight to 5:30 a.m. Eastern Time. King would interview a guest for the first 60 minutes, with callers asking questions that continued the interview for another 2 hours.^[1] When he interviewed authors, King said that he would not read their book in advance, so that he would not know more about the book than his audience.^[6][7] King said "The less I know, the better I feel about a person or book."^[8]

King recalled that due to the number of calls coming in on the early days of the show "there was more than one occasion when [area code] 703 blew".^[5] King said that they originally wanted a toll-free phone number for call-in, but came to believe that he got a better quality of calls when the callers had to pay.^[8] When he did this show, King said that doing an overnight show meant that his work came at the end of his day, unlike for most people whose work came at the beginning of their day.^[6] The show was successful, starting with relatively few affiliates and eventually growing to more than 500. It ran until 1994.^[9] Once King started doing Larry King Live for CNN, he would do both shows in an evening.^[7]

C-SPAN would annually record, and then repeatedly show, an entire show on cable TV.^[10] Some years, C-SPAN would simulcast the broadcast, so that TV viewers could see the show live (as radio listeners normally heard it).^[11][12]

Open Phone America

At 3 a.m., King would allow callers to discuss any topic they pleased with him,^[5] until the end of the program, when he expressed his own political opinions. That segment was called Open Phone America. Many stations in the western time zones would carry Open Phone America live, followed by the guest interview on tape delay. Thus listeners from across the country could call into Open Phone America.^[13]

Callers to the show would be told (on air) to call the number and "If it rings, let it ring. We'll answer when it's your turn."^[14] Some of King's regular callers used the pseudonyms "The Numbers Guy",^[15] "The (Syracuse) Chair",^[16] "The Portland Laugher,"^[5][17] "The Scandal Scooper,"^[8] "The Miami Derelict,"^[18] "The Todd Cruz Caller," "The Water Is Warm Caller", and "Mr. Radio". "Mr. Radio" made over 200 calls to King during Open Phone America.

Humor

King would occasionally entertain the audience by telling amusing anecdotes from his youth and early career in radio, such as a story about him and his friends faking the death of a schoolmate.^[19][20] The show also occasionally featured a "fictional alien, Gork of the planet Fringus",^[21] "who supposedly existed one year in the future, giving highlights of the coming year on Earth".^[22][23]

Final year

Larry's primary guest host had been Jim Bohannon, who began hosting his own Saturday evening call-in show in the mid 1980s.^[24] In 1993 Westwood One, which had purchased Mutual in 1985, moved Larry King to an afternoon time slot and offered Bohannon his own show in King's late evening time slot. So the show was moved to afternoons, but, because most talk radio stations at the time had an established policy of local origination in the time-slot (3 to 6 p.m. Eastern Time) that Mutual offered the show, many of King's overnight affiliates declined carrying his daytime show^[25] and it was unable to generate the same audience size. The afternoon show was given to David Brenner in 1994,^[26][27] and radio affiliates were given the option of carrying the audio of King's new CNN evening television program. The Westwood One radio simulcast of King's CNN show continued until December 31, 2009.^[28]

Sources