Larry King's Retiring from CNN, And Being Replaced With... Some Warm Body
Yesterday, CNN stalwart Larry King finally decided to, in his words, "hang up my nightly suspenders." This was inevitable -- not only because King is 76, and because his show currently is posting its worst ratings it in a decade, but also because there's been a movement in recent weeks to push him out as soon after his 25th anniversary as possible. The speculation about his replacement reached a fever pitch, in a cart-before-the-horse dynamic, before he resigned.
Unfortunately, the speculation about who would replace King speaks to the current confusion at CNN. Even though King has been on his way out for a while now, the list of potential candidates doesn't exactly show vision: it shows a network that, strategically, is all over that dotted map that you see behind King's head every night. That's disconcerting since this isn't just about finding the "new" Larry King; it's about further defining what CNN is supposed to be in a highly partisan cable news environment in which its ratings are lagging. (Its first move toward a new direction, following Campbell Brown's resignation, was to hire Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker last week for the 8 p.m. slot preceding King for a sort of modern day Crossfire.)
The prime candidates, according to reports, have been CBS News anchor Katie Couric (said to have turned it down), and two talent show staples: American Idol's Ryan Seacrest and Piers Morgan -- probably best known as the-male-judge-who-isn't-Simon Cowell from that Susan Boyle video. (In the U.S., he's a judge on America's Got Talent.)
Other hats in the ring, per The Huffington Post, have included everyone from Survivor's Jeff Probst to former President Bill Clinton to The View's Joy Behar, though it's not completely clear who among its laundry list of candidates is self-nominated. King said last night on the show that he'd like to see Seacrest take his chair; Morgan, according to several reports, is already deep in negotiations to take the spot.
But who wins is almost besides the point. If Couric had said yes, you'd have someone capable of interviewing anyone in the world -- including snagging the all-important interviews with world leaders who can be put off by the partisanship on MSNBC and Fox News. Can Ryan Seacrest, fresh off of naming Lee DeWyse as the latest American Idol, mix it up with Benjamin Netanyahu? Is Piers Morgan the guy you want in the chair to discuss deficit reduction with Ben Bernanke? It would take years for them to reach the same level of Larry King -- whatever you think of him -- and CNN doesn't have years to find a new direction.
What this roster of candidates brings to the table are very different things, which leads me to the conclusion that CNN isn't so much looking for a show, but the warm body of a TV personality -- any TV personality -- to sit in King's chair. That's not the stuff of which ratings resurgences are made.
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