TWILIGHT OF THE GODS: Well, I�m glad to read that CNN is at least contemplating the possibility of a day without Larry King on their network. You know it�s summer when most of the news you get arrives in the form of rumour � in this case, speculation that the news network will be offering King�s chair and red suspenders to Jay Leno when the time finally comes for the 74-year-old host of Larry King Live to retire.
Leno, as we know, is leaving The Tonight Show next year, his bosses at NBC having decided to transplant Conan O�Brien from the east to west coast and into an earlier time slot in the search for younger demographics. Leno isn�t exactly happy about it, and he�s been quietly � but not too quietly, as this is Hollywood � shopping around for a new gig with the potential to make his soon-to-be-former bosses realize their mistake.
According to Bill Zwecker of the Chicago Sun-Times, ABC and Fox have been talking to Leno, but it�s CNN who want to offer him �a late-night chatfest that could morph into Leno replacing Larry King.� It�s all in the realm of fantasy right now, apparently, and Leno could find himself growing old in his holding pattern CNN show waiting to replace King -- who was, after all -- the first journalist to interview Marconi after his landmark first wireless broadcast between England and Newfoundland�s Signal Hill in 1901, a seminal moment in the young journalist�s career, albeit one that was captured for posterity on a zoetrope, as Marconi was just inventing broadcasting at the time.
I�ve never made a secret of my mystification at King�s longevity at hosting soft-soap, often befuddled interviews with guests who are either friends and therefore very forgiving, or just openly bemused at the kindly but clueless old man on the other side of the table. The best King shows are inevitably the ones where some wary zookeeper brings a bunch of animals on the show, most of which � badgers, raccoons, even squirrels - King claims never to have heard of before. Leno, for all of his shortcomings, would be an improvement on an exponential scale.
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