Biography and interesting facts about Larry King. Larry King

Larry King, the son of emigrants from Belarus, was born on November 19, 1933 in New York, Brooklyn. Real name: Lawrence Harvey Seigel. At the end high school He changed several jobs, then, when he was twenty-two, he moved to Miami, where he got a job as a presenter at a small local radio station, WIOD. Its first broadcast took place on May 1, 1957. In addition to his show, he hosted news and sports programs. Then he took the pseudonym Larry King. Later, in 1960, he began hosting his own Sunday program, “Under the Cover of Miami,” on the WTVJ television channel. His activities were not limited to work on television - King also wrote personal columns in the Miami Herald and Miami News newspapers.

In the early seventies, King became embroiled in a complex financial scandal and was arrested. As a result, he was removed from television work, and for several years he was engaged in a wide variety of activities - he was an announcer at a race track in Louisiana, and wrote articles for Esquire magazine.

Returning to Miami, he again began working at radio station WIOD, and in 1978 he opened The Larry King Show on the Mutual Broadcasting Network, which aired in live weekly, Monday to Friday. King's show was structured as follows: first, he interviewed the guest of the program, then let his listeners, who called from different cities, followed by a discussion of the topic of conversation. The program was extremely popular and over time it began to be broadcast by hundreds of radio stations throughout the country.

In 1985, King, having received an offer from CNN, launched a television analogue of his radio program, called “Larry King Live.” During the existence of the program, many leading politicians visited King. different countries, sports and show business stars, writers and other celebrities.

King's show, thanks to its broadcast in other countries, brought him international fame, and in his homeland he became one of the most popular TV presenters (although King himself prefers to call himself an interviewer). He was honored to be inducted into the Museum of Broadcasting's Radio Hall of Fame and has received ten awards from the American cable television(Cable ACE Awards). In addition to working on television, from 1982 to 2001 he wrote a regular column in the newspaper USA Today. During his life he also published a number of books that became bestsellers, including Tell It to King, " Love stories World War II," "What I Learned from Pundits, Politicians and Presidents," and "How to Talk to Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere."

Larry King

HOW TO TALK TO ANYONE, ANYWHERE, ANYWHERE

our team

No book is published due to the efforts of the authors alone. We conducted the interviews and wrote the text, but the contributions of other members of our team were equally significant. For this we express our gratitude to them, in particular:

Peter Ginnah, our editor at Crown Publishers in New York;

Judy Thomas, Larry's assistant and co-producer of the CNN talk show Larry King Live;

Maggie Simpson, communications director for Larry King Live;

Pat Piper, longtime producer of The Larry King Show on Mutual Broadcasting System;

Stacy Wolf, Larry's agent, thanks to whom, in fact, this book was able to appear;

Russell Galen, a literary agent who helped Bill Gilbert publish books for many years.

Introduction

We all need to talk

Would you rather jump out of a plane without a parachute or be seated next to someone at a dinner party? stranger?

If you chose the first answer, don't despair. You are far from alone. We have to talk every day, but there are many situations when this turns out to be very difficult, as well as circumstances in which we could act better. The road to success - in everyday life or in professional activity- is paved with conversations, and if you lack confidence in communication, this road can be bumpy.

To make this road smoother, I wrote my book. For thirty-eight years now, conversation, conversation, communication are my daily bread; during radio and television programs I had to talk with the most different people- from Mikhail Gorbachev to Michael Jordan. In addition, I regularly speak to a fairly diverse audience - from sheriffs to merchants. Next I will tell you how, in my opinion, you should talk - whether with one person or with a hundred.

For me, talking is the main joy in life, my favorite pastime. Here is one of my earliest memories of my childhood in Brooklyn: standing on the corner of Eighty-sixth Street and Bay Parkway and loudly announcing the brands of cars passing by. I was seven years old then. My friends nicknamed me Mouthpiece, and since then I haven’t stopped talking.

My best friend of those years, Herb Cohen (he remains my best friend), I remember rooting for the Dodgers at Ebbets Field. I sat down in cheap seats away from everyone, took the program and began to “comment” on the game. Then I came home and told my friends about the last match in all the details - I’m not kidding: exactly like that, in all the details. Herb still likes to remember: “If the match at Ebbets Field that Larry saw lasted two hours and ten minutes, Larry’s story about this match lasted the same amount.” I remember Herbie and I first met in the school principal's office - we were both ten years old at the time. When I entered the office, Herbie was already there. Now we can’t remember why we were sent there, but we are both inclined to think that it was most likely for talking in class.

And yet, as much as I love to talk, I completely understand why some people feel awkward while talking. They are afraid to say the wrong thing or in the wrong way. One writer noted: “It is better to remain silent and be suspected of stupidity than to open your mouth and immediately dispel all doubts on this score.” When you talk to a stranger or speak in front of a large audience, such fears increase many times over.

I hope my book will help you get rid of these fears. I am convinced of one thing: with the right approach, you can talk to anyone. After reading this book, you will be able to enter into any conversation with confidence and learn how to effectively convey your message to others in a business conversation. You will speak better, and with more pleasure.

The book you're about to read provides a wealth of information on this subject, along with advice on how to speak in a variety of situations, from your cousin's wedding to a high-society dinner to speaking at a PTA meeting. I will tell you about the experiences of those whom I interviewed on air, and about my own experience, which, as you will see, I acquired under very difficult conditions.

Speech is the most important form of communication; it is speech that distinguishes people from animals. It is estimated that a person speaks about eighteen thousand words every day, and I have no doubt that this figure is correct (in my case it should probably be increased). So why don't we try to develop our conversational abilities and get the most out of them? Let's start right now. Turn the page and move on.

Hey Herbie, listen to me!

Larry King

Basics of Success in Conversation

Honesty

The right approach

Interest in the interlocutor

Frankness

Talking is like playing golf, driving a car, or running a store: the more you do it, the better it becomes and the more enjoyable it becomes. But first you need to understand the basic principles.

In the art of speaking I was fortunate to achieve some success. Perhaps that is why, while reading this book, you think to yourself: “Well, of course, he can claim that talking is a pleasure. He's good at it."

Of course, I had a natural tendency to talk, but even those who have natural abilities have to work to develop them. This is how talent turns into skill. Ted Williams, the greatest baseball player I have ever seen, a man more naturally gifted than any of my contemporaries, trained alongside the average player. Nature endowed Luciano Pavarotti with an amazing voice, and yet he took vocal lessons.

The tendency to talk is in my blood, but I also had many cases when the conversation did not go well.

My inglorious debut

If you had been sitting next to me in a radio studio thirty-seven years ago and witnessed my first broadcast, you would probably have been willing to bet anything that I would never be able to hold out, much less succeed, in the conversational genre.

It happened in Miami Beach on the morning of May 1, 1957, at the small radio station WAHR, across from the police station on First Street near Washington Street. For the previous three weeks, I had been hanging around the room, hoping to achieve my dream of breaking into the airwaves. CEO Marshall Simmonds told me that he liked my voice (another circumstance that had nothing to do with me), but that there were no vacancies at the moment. This didn't discourage me. I was ready to wait as long as necessary, which is what I told the director. To this he replied, well, if I am at hand all the time, he will take me to the first vacancy that opens.

I had just arrived in Miami Beach from Brooklyn and knew that until my big opportunity came, I could live in an apartment with Uncle Jack and his wife, from where I could walk to the radio station. I didn’t have a cent in my pocket, and I didn’t have anything at all, except maybe a roof over my head, but every day I went to the radio station and watched how the disc jockeys worked on the air, how the announcers talked about the latest news , as a sports commentator, introduces listeners to the news of sports life.

Holding my breath, for the first time in my life I watched with my own eyes how the latest news reports from the AP and UPI agencies arrived by teletype. I myself wrote a few short notes in the hope that they would be useful to some of the commentators. So three weeks passed, and suddenly the morning program host quit. On Friday, Marshall called me into his office and told me that he was hiring me for this job starting Monday at a salary of fifty-five dollars a week. I will be on air weekdays from nine to twelve. In the afternoon I will read the issues latest news and sports news, and my working day will end at five o’clock.

My dream has come true! I had to work on the radio and host a three-hour show in the morning; plus I will go on air six times during the day. This means my total airtime will be the same as that of Arthur Godfrey, the superstar of the famous national commercial broadcaster CBS!

The legendary Larry King, a television and radio star, achieved mastery in how to communicate, ask questions and listen to his interlocutor. This time he acted as a speaker, telling Entrepreneur columnist Kelsey Humphries the secrets of his success.

“You have to tell that Oprah story,” Joe Dickey, now CEO of Ora TV, told Larry King as we sat in King's awards room at his Beverly Hills home. King recounted how Oprah Winfrey once shared with him a story about her safari in Africa. Locals They didn't recognize Oprah, so she started listing other celebrities to see who they knew. At one point, one of the locals interrupted her and asked: “Do you know Larry King?”

Source: TVGuide

His destiny is a real embodiment American dream: boy from Jewish family dreams of getting on the radio and gets a job as a cleaner at a local station. One day, a disc jockey fell ill, and King took a pseudonym, successfully performed on his debut broadcast, and then managed to conduct more than 60 thousand interviews during his career. He has received a Peabody Award, several Cable ACE Awards, and has been nominated for multiple Emmys. King is a member of the National Broadcasting Hall of Fame, the Television Hall of Fame and has his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He has also written articles for several newspapers and magazines and is a New York Times bestselling author.

At 83, King is still in great shape and hosts the show Larry King Now on the digital channel Ora TV, which he co-owns with billionaire Carlos Slim. King has become an icon of the media industry and the main talk show host both on radio and television.

If you're wondering if I was excited to interview him, the answer is absolutely. I knew he could teach me the art of speaking, writing and interviewing. What advice can he give, what secret tricks can he teach? How did he turn his radio success into television success and then build his own TV network out of it?

During our hour-long interview, King answered all of these questions and more. Here are nine communication secrets from Larry King himself.

1. First of all – start

If you're dreaming of a career as a professional communicator, be it radio, television, or print, King recommends getting started as soon as possible. He himself got into the industry only because, when he accidentally met a CBS announcer, he immediately told him about his desire to work in radio and asked how he could get a job there. He was advised to go to Miami - a new, nascent market, where there were much more opportunities for newcomers. Arriving there, King got a job at a small radio station as an assistant, running errands and doing cleaning.

Lesson - take any job that will allow you to get into business. And once you have succeeded: “Work as hard as you can. Do everything you are told. Work on weekends. Come early and don’t give up.”

2. Keep gaining experience

King took on any job offers in the media industry because he didn't want to miss out on anything. one chance Practice and improve your speaking, writing and interviewing skills. Its success in the local market led to its first national broadcast - the first ever national radio show. Soon he was invited to the then young CNN channel.

3. Stay true to your principles

According to King, one of the reasons for his success is that he did not allow himself to forget where he came from and always remained true to his principles.

“I could be interpreted in different ways, but I always did everything the same,” he says. – Who, what, when, where and why. I ask questions." He cites one of his favorite interviews as an example.

“In our studio we have Frank Sinatra, the most a famous person in the world. I'm sitting opposite him. The lights come on and I say, "Welcome to The Larry King Show. My guest today is Frank Sinatra. What brings you here?" I didn’t start talking nonsense like “this is my old friend.”

Nowadays, it is common for a communications professional to play several roles at once: the host can also be a producer, the guest can also be a consultant, the writer can be a trainer, and so on. However, King advises delegating responsibilities if possible. He relies entirely on assistants - technicians, producers, publishers and others - so that he can do his job when the lights come on.

4. Know your role in the conversation

There are times when you need to tell your story or your opinion, but there are times when you need to relax and simply act as a mediator. Despite the fact that King wrote several books and acted as a speaker, he spent most of his career listening to others. In his opinion, listeners love him for his style of “questions from the street” and his ability to stand outside the discussion - something that modern presenters lack, as King admits.

Source: AdWeek

“The job of a journalist in an interview is to extract information [from the guest],” he says. – I have never put myself above the guest. I never say "I" when I interview. I'm just a middleman."

5. Stay curious

To be a good communicator, you need to be curious, hungry for information, says King. Ask questions, read as much as you can to follow people and trends.

“You have to be curious—I’m the kind of person you wouldn’t want to be in the next seat with on a plane. I do this in life too.”

6. Live for today

King advises journalists to think only about the present.

“Forget about yesterday's interview, it's over. Forget about tomorrow’s interview, there’s still time before it,” he says. “If today I have a conversation with a worker on strike, and tomorrow with the president, now I will not think about the president.”

7. Trust your instincts

King's instincts were right on his first interview with a real celebrity in 1958.

“One day the great Bobby Darin came in... [and] about a third of the way through the interview, I felt a rhythm, something clicked inside me,” he recalls. “Then others started coming.”

King felt the same way ten minutes into the first broadcast on CNN. Throughout his career, he listened to his intuition, and this led to his strong-willed decision to remain at CNN. It was a risky move because the channel was just a small startup at the time, and King could make more money anywhere.

“No matter what industry you're in, if you're happy, don't quit,” he says. “Don’t do anything just for the money and trust your instincts.”

8. Be yourself

Know yours strengths. Are you better at printed materials? Or an interview? Do you look better live or recorded? King knew early on that his talent was to “feel at home in the studio.” He credits this knowledge as one of the reasons for his success, along with some advice he received from Arthur Godfrey.

“You can't make the audience like you, so just be yourself,” he repeats this advice. – The only secret is that there is no secret. Be yourself."

9. Never give up

King assured future correspondents that, although this was very competitive environment, if they have the right abilities, determination and patience, they will succeed. To succeed, King believes, you need to be “restless,” because even now he still wonders, “What else can I do?”

“You will be rejected, you will be fired,” he says. “But never give up.”

The main reward for King was the journey to the top, with all its ups and downs.

“The best part [of my career] is the climb itself, every little step,” he says. – More important than the result is the process itself. The struggle, all these ups and downs. That’s the whole point.”

Larry King Live. As CNN notes, the news of the decision to close the talk show followed a decline in the program's ratings and King's own family troubles.

The famous American TV presenter Larry King (real name Lawrence Harvey Seigel), the son of emigrants from Belarus, was born on November 19, 1933 in New York, Brooklyn.

After graduating from high school, he changed several jobs. And when he turned 22, he moved to Miami, where he got a job as a presenter at a small local radio station, WIOD. His first broadcast took place on May 1, 1957. Then he was advised to change Jewish surname to something neutral, and he became King. On the radio, he was a DJ and hosted news and sports programs.

In 1960, King had his own television show, “Under the Cover of Miami” on the WTVJ channel. His activities were not limited to work on television - King also wrote personal columns in the Miami Herald and Miami News newspapers.

In the early 1970s. King became embroiled in a complicated financial scandal and was arrested. As a result, he was removed from television work, and for several years he was engaged in a wide variety of activities - he was an announcer at a race track in Louisiana, and wrote articles for Esquire magazine.

Returning to Miami, he returned to work at WIOD radio and in 1978 launched The Larry King Show on the Mutual Broadcasting Network, which aired live weekly, Monday through Friday. King's show was structured as follows: first, he interviewed a guest on the program, then let his listeners, who called from different cities, ask questions, followed by a discussion of the topic of conversation. The program was extremely popular and over time it began to be broadcast by hundreds of radio stations throughout the country.

In 1985, King, having received an offer from CNN, launched a television analogue of his radio program, called “Larry King Live”.

The material was prepared based on information from open sources

"Larry King Live" ("Larry King Live") - talk show hosted by Larry King (1985-2010); popular CNN television program, known not only in the USA. The content of the program is a live conversation that Larry King conducts with a celebrity: a prominent politician, businessman, actor, etc. A total of 6,120 episodes were released.

Story

For 25 years on CNN, the show has not changed either its broadcast time (9:00 p.m.) or its host, and on this basis it entered the Guinness Book of Records:

During his career, its creator conducted more than 40 thousand interviews with politicians, stars, and businessmen from all over the world.

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• Larry King Live(English) on the Internet Movie Database website

Excerpt from The Larry King Show

The troops continued to retreat from Smolensk. The enemy followed them. On August 10, the regiment, commanded by Prince Andrei, passed along the high road, past the avenue leading to Bald Mountains. The heat and drought lasted for more than three weeks. Every day, curly clouds walked across the sky, occasionally blocking the sun; but in the evening it cleared up again, and the sun set in a brownish-red haze. Only heavy dew at night refreshed the earth. The bread that remained on the root burned and spilled out. The swamps are dry. The cattle roared from hunger, not finding food in the sun-burnt meadows. Only at night and in the forests there was still dew and there was coolness. But along the road, along the high road along which the troops marched, even at night, even through the forests, there was no such coolness. The dew was not noticeable on the sandy dust of the road, which had been pushed up more than a quarter of an arshin. As soon as dawn broke, the movement began. The convoys and artillery walked silently along the hub, and the infantry were ankle-deep in soft, stuffy, hot dust that had not cooled down overnight. One part of this sand dust was kneaded by feet and wheels, the other rose and stood as a cloud above the army, sticking into the eyes, hair, ears, nostrils and, most importantly, into the lungs of people and animals moving along this road. The higher the sun rose, the higher the cloud of dust rose, and through this thin, hot dust one could look at the sun, not covered by clouds. with the naked eye. The sun appeared as a large crimson ball. There was no wind, and people were suffocating in this still atmosphere. People walked with scarves tied around their noses and mouths. Arriving at the village, everyone rushed to the wells. They fought for water and drank it until they were dirty.
Prince Andrei commanded the regiment, and the structure of the regiment, the welfare of its people, the need to receive and give orders occupied him. The fire of Smolensk and its abandonment were an era for Prince Andrei. A new feeling of bitterness against the enemy made him forget his grief. He was entirely devoted to the affairs of his regiment, he was caring for his people and officers and affectionate with them. In the regiment they called him our prince, they were proud of him and loved him. But he was kind and meek only with his regimental soldiers, with Timokhin, etc., with completely new people and in a foreign environment, with people who could not know and understand his past; but as soon as he encountered one of his former ones, from the staff, he immediately bristled again; he became angry, mocking and contemptuous. Everything that connected his memory with the past repulsed him, and therefore he tried in the relations of this former world only not to be unfair and to fulfill his duty.