I have a style,'' Larry King told me in 1998. "If you don't like that style, I can't do anything about that.''
There were plenty who did not like King's style, but I did. And I'm going to miss this Average Joe with above-average curiosity, this virtuoso of the vernacular. His announcement that he is surrendering his perch at CNN after 25 years means the departure of a genuine TV character, one as idiosyncratic and memorable in his way as, say, John Locke on "Lost'' or Gregory House on "House.''
The difference, of course, was that Larry King was not a scriptwriter's creation, but real. With his suspenders, his oversized glasses, his bulbous noggin, and a gravelly voice with which he questioned guests or greeted call-ins from viewers ("Cedar Falls, hello!), he seemed to belong to another time.
Increasingly, that became a problem, and, at 76, with his ratings plummeting and his show often seeming unfocused, he's right to hang it up now. With its hiring of disgraced-but-feisty former New York governor Eliot Spitzer to cohost a "Crossfire''-style show in the 8 p.m. hour, CNN is clearly trying to play catch up with Fox News and MSNBC by providing a home for partisan combat.
That's not what King was about. A radio guy originally, he brought that medium's appetite for sustained conversation to his work on television. He liked to talk to people and -- get this! -- he actually listened to what they said, unlike so many other cable blowhards in love with the sound of their own voice. In contrast with their bullying demeanor, King brought an old-school, gentlemanly quality even to his interviews of people with whom he disagreed.
He was a quirky original, and in any history that is written of television, Larry King will loom large.
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