Larry King, often misunderstood for his approach to softball as a celebrity interviewer, is a considerable loss to television

Image from The Associated Press

Larry King interviewed more than 50,000 people for more than 50 years in the entertainment business, including every American president from Nixon to Obama. However, his 1994 interview with actor Marlon Brando is remembered as one of the most iconic pop cultural moments in which the late announcer participated. Famously reluctant to speak to reporters, Brando was interviewed at his own home by King, who did his best to make the actor comfortable. The non-sequiturs were listened to patiently, the non-answer ramblings recognized as rare pearls of wisdom. At the end of the interview, Brando and King began to sing (the 1930s hit ‘I have a date with an angel‘by Al Bowlly) and the actor gave King a quick kiss on the lips, saying, “bye, honey.”

It was a classic King performance, an exercise in air mime that turned into something much more whimsical in the end. It was also the perfect illustration of King’s key strengths – the ability to channel the common man, the willingness to make each guest as comfortable as possible.

In fact, most of the criticism King received throughout his career was in this regard: he asked too many softball questions, he didn’t seem prepared for interviews at all (he asked Jerry Seinfeld why Seinfeld was canceled, despite the fact that the comedian had turned down an offer to keep the show going for another season.) In response, King would say that his lack of preparation was deliberate, that he wanted to learn alongside his audience and not alienate them with a series of unknown facts at the same time.

Larry King archive image. AP

One could argue that with King’s retirement from his eponymous talk show in 2010, the ‘softball’ format was truly on the wane. King’s replacement, for example, was Piers Morgan, the British journalist infamous for making disconcerting and politically incorrect jokes in front of his guests. Morgan’s various online and offline feuds (the 2013 one with Brett Lee culminated in a cricket showdown with retired Australian fast bowler; Lee broke one of Morgan’s ribs) made him something of an anti-figure. -King. It was a sign that even eminently salable populism was undergoing a change of tone.

One reason networks were moving from the King model to more combative territory is, of course, social media. A more aggressive interview approach is in line with the spirit of Twitter, for example. But beyond that, it’s about responsibility. People don’t want to give celebrities a free pass for their transgressions. They want tough questions to be asked from the get-go; there is often more than one hint of schadenfreude here. But this impulse can also come from an ironically fair place. Jimmy Fallon, for example, is a presenter who is not known for asking tough questions, quite the opposite. His clip with Donald Trump, where he jokes and asks stupid questions, was often circulated in anger during the former president’s tenure. Look what you normalized was the prevailing sentiment.

Ellen DeGeneres, for example, is another famous exponent of the celebrity interview. And his focus is also on the Larry King School of Hollywood Schmoozing. It is true that DeGeneres’ current decline has to do with the impact of his personal brand (following the revelations of bad behavior and a toxic work atmosphere on the sets of The Ellen DeGeneres To show). But it’s also true that people are getting tired of DeGeneres and company. normalizing the terrible behaviors of his famous friends, he did his best to defend Kevin Hart after his homophobic jokes. And then there was the moment when he watched the ball game with his “friend” George W. Bush.

File photo of former US President George W Bush and CNN’s Larry King. AP

Basically, people realized that the “famous interviewer” would always be closer to the celebrity than to the people he was addressing on television each week.

King himself had stated Ryan Seacrest as the most likely to carry his mantle forward (this was before CNN gave his show to Piers Morgan). You can see why: Seacrest’s cheerful disposition and similar risk aversion made him the natural successor. And what did Hollywood do with this development? They parodied it without mercy. In one of BoJack Horseman ‘In the most brutal takedowns, a recurring character is simply referred to as “Ryan Seacrest Guy.” Mr ARST is a loud and unpleasantly cheerful TV host who interviews actors and is an expert at using hundreds of words to say nothing at all. It is white noise made human, television as a fireplace.

With the death of King, the entertainment business has lost one of its last ties to several eras past. He lived through the times of radio and networks, the cable boom and saw the birth of the age of social networks. Given that the polarization of public discourse is what it is, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see a common man dominating the business like Larry King did. Regardless of how you feel about King’s softball approach, it’s still a sizable loss.