Larry King, ‘Hung Out to Dry’?

WaPo’s Tom Shales weighs in on Larry King:

CNN is in big, big trouble and now even its once untouchable flagship, the SS Larry King, seems to be breaking up on the rocks.

Anyone who has watched King’s show lately may have noticed a certain aura of torpor settling in. The program has changed shockingly little in 2 1/2 decades (it celebrates its 25th anniversary in June). King is still good — not the most aggressive or incisive interviewer in the world, not the most confrontational by a long shot, but solid and steady and asking the questions “normal” people would ask and thus want answered. But the show built around King has become creaky and leaky — almost as if CNN execs aren’t all that concerned about it crashing on shore.

…

CNN higher-ups have hardly been conspicuous in defending and praising King on the record so as to soften the blow of the current ratings decline. Some see King as, in effect, having been hung out to dry or even, in a professional competitive sense, hung out to die.

It’s no way to treat a Larry.

• Related: King Divorce in Holding Pattern

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