'Iconic' King Leaves Throne: Final Show Tonight

Tonight is Larry King’s final show on CNN—Bill Maher and Ryan Seacrest will be in the studio with him, and word has it he’ll be receiving a taped sendoff from President Obama and chat with more than a dozen other mystery guests via satellite. Some 50,000 interviews later, what the critics are saying:

• King’s career “eternally careened between pinnacles of wild success and pits of utter catastrophe,” writes Glenn Garvin in the Kansas City Star. But “it's hard to find anyone of any significance in the past half-century who hasn't sat across the table.”

• “King was criticized throughout the years by other journalists and media-watchers for favoring softball questions, but if anything, his tendency to go easy on subjects kept the famous names coming,” note Amie Parnes and Karin Tanabe at Politico.
• “If Larry King's not iconic we don't know who is,” writes Lisa de Moraes at the Washington Post. “We will miss Larry's giggle. We will miss Larry's stupid suspenders. We will miss the way he, at times, has no idea who he is interviewing.”

(More Larry King stories.)