Larry King Reflects: When “CNN Wasn’t in Washington”

Larry King sat down for an interview with the CanWest news service. King talks about how Ted Turner courted him to join the fledgling CNN in 1985.

“Ted gave me a unique contract. We (agreed to) a three-year contract. But at the end of a year, if either one of us was unhappy, we could get out. I knew the first night that I loved the show,” he says. “I had never seen CNN because CNN wasn’t in Washington. We didn’t have cable. But I knew I loved it right away.”

CNN wasn’t in Washington in 1985? It was already 5 years old by then. Anyone?

And when you click on the canada.com link, you may be surprised to learn it is -26C in Saskatoon. (…at least it was at this writing.)

>Update from a network insider and former CNNer: “As late as 1984, at the end of my first tenure there, CNN was available in the DC area only at the Pentagon, the Hill, and about two blocks surrounding the original bureau on Wisconsin Avenue. You could get it in the Holiday Inn next to the office, you could get it in the bar up the street, and I assume you could get it in the graveyard across the street.”

>More from an emailer: “CNN may not have been on in Washington in 1985, but I do know that it was available in Saskatoon! Canadian cable companies added it to their systems in the fall of 1984.”

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