Name: Larry King And The People Who Call Into His Show | Letterman
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Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Larry King And The People Who Call Into His Show | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-01. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Larry King And The People Who Call Into His Show | Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2022-02-01. Transcript available.

My next guest spends five and a half hours, five and a half hours a night, five
nights
a week, talking and listening to Americans who call in from all over the
country to have
their say on his national radio program.
The success of this program is one of the most remarkable broadcasting stories
of the
last few years.
Please welcome Mr. Larry King.
Larry King.
I find your program fascinating, refreshing, and I tried to describe it in the
opening.
There's something about driving in your car or in your home, not driving your
car, in
your home, listening to your radio program late at night that's very satisfying.
And I don't know what that illusion or image or impression is, but it's
something magical
about hearing people from all over the country.
I don't know what it is either.
I think you're kind of at the heartbeat of America.
You sit there in this radio studio, I look out the window on the capital of the
United
States, and suddenly you hear voices, Mobile, Dallas, New York, Miami, and
there's kind
of a conglomeration of America all in one room.
And I think that comes through the airwaves.
There's something about it.
After the guest leaves every night and we're doing open phones, people might
call about,
what do you think of David Letterman?
People might call about baseball races.
People might call about, what do you think about popcorn being delivered to a
television
studio?
Anything.
But there's that magical thing.
You've hit it.
I don't know how to word it.
You know, Studs Terkel, who was here recently, said it's kind of like a
composite of America.
It's Walt Whitman-esque.
I don't know.
I just know it's fun to do.
Yeah.
And I think if I didn't enjoy it, the audience wouldn't enjoy it.
I enjoy it.
It's a great show.
And you're perfect for that time of night.
Your voice just seems to suit the hour perfectly.
Let me ask you, assuming that what we've described here is true, that you are
sampling all corners
of America.
Have you ever, since you've been doing the show, seen differences of opinion
come from different
parts of the country or seen one general attitude change over the course of
months?
Well, when I first started, you could get a call and sense an attitude, like
Seattle would
be more liberal than Biloxi.
That's been changing.
There's a kind of, maybe it's due to all of us in this business we're in,
accents are changing.
You don't hear accents anymore, especially if someone's under 30.
We've had an effect on that because, you know, media, they don't hire.
So the local disc jockey doesn't have a southern accent anymore.
And there's also, when you get on a certain topic, you can, America's a lot
smarter than
we think.
At least a lot smarter than people in Washington think.
People are sharper.
They're in tune with things more.
And now I sense there's a kind of, like you take a thing like nuclear power.
Man, there's a national consensus on that.
And I think President Reagan hipped onto it over the weekend.
That people don't want nuclear bombs near them.
The threat, what that's done to us, there's a national think on that.
So you can't say, well, Dallas is going to be more conservative than New York
on the subject.
That's gone.
Yeah.
This point of a nuclear power, is that as a result, do you think of, well, this
is not
really, like a three-mile island.
Has that changed everybody's notion?
That started.
And then the election of Mr. Reagan, who was a hardliner, who challenged the
Russians, at
least verbally.
So we became more aware of it.
No salt to talks.
The Russians talking tough.
And then suddenly the natural reaction off that, that we all start saying, hey,
we could
be gone tomorrow.
And that's very frightening.
In fact, you and I could be sitting talking, and in one minute, one guy
somewhere hits
a button, and we're gone.
Yeah.
I've had that happen.
Let me ask you another question about this.
I find this to be fascinating.
There are constantly polls, opinion polls, how is the president doing?
Do you notice any correspondence or relationship to the calls you get to what
the polls indicate
the next week?
Definitely.
Yeah.
I think we're a compendium.
It's not an exact science because we're not taking a poll.
And callers are calling of their own volition.
They're paying long distance charges.
They call every night.
We get a wide variety of people calling.
But I'd say, like if you were to take the national consensus on Ronald Reagan,
he is very popular,
but there's a kind of quiet hesitation about, is this going to work?
So I would say that he retains his personal popularity.
The polls show that.
Is the program going to work?
Negative.
And the polls show that.
And we reflect that.
We get a pretty good reflection.
Yeah.
And then there's also the sense of America about that show.
You know, there's a lot of people up at night.
10% of the population is up.
Many people may not realize that.
There's a potential to watch this show tonight of 20 million people.
They're doing all sorts of things.
We used to think they were insomniacs.
They're not.
Yeah.
What do you find your audience to be, generally?
Well, their average age is 31.
I'll bet a tremendous amount of the audience tonight's going crazy, like
watching you and listening.
I think we get it.
Well, that's right.
Now, after the show, you're going to go back to Washington and do your show
tonight.
Right.
And we'll be on opposite each other.
Now, tonight at 3 a.m. Eastern time, when we go to Open Phone America, after
the guest leaves, I'll get calls about this show.
You know, people will call in to reflect what I thought of you.
You know, were you better than Tom?
We'll get...
We'll get reaction to you.
Now, I've always been an admirer of yours.
I'm a fan of yours.
Thank you very much.
I think you're terrific.
Thank you, sir.
This audience...
Awfully nice to you.
I mean, I want to say, you know, guests on shows never talk...
Because they want to talk about themselves that are selling a book or something.
This show.
I mean, what other show in the history of American radio can have a United
States senator, Rhodes Scholar, and bring a live or dead fish into that studio?
Yeah.
Now, what you have at home in America is, the hip people all understand this.
So anybody under 40 who's really grooving knows what you're doing.
But I'm trying to imagine the little old lady in Des Moines who's watching
Senator Bradley because she's waiting to hear about tax reductions.
And a fish comes across this door.
Or you were about to introduce me, and a guy came in with eight bags of popcorn.
Yeah, yeah.
And that girl who came to see the show has not seen the show yet.
No, she's back there.
Your show, tell me about the...
Now, what you mentioned there is a real functioning part of your show.
People tune in to hear what America is thinking.
It's really two shows in one.
For the first three hours, we have a guest.
The guest, we do an interview for an hour, then two hours of phone calls for
the guest, like we'll do with you.
You'll come on, I'll interview you for an hour.
Then two hours of calls.
Then you leave.
And at 3 to 5, Eastern time, we take calls from everywhere about anything.
The guest is gone, so it could be about politics, baseball, religion, anything.
It just sweeps across America, and it's really fun.
The day that President Reagan was shot, that was a real indicator for you, wasn't
it?
That, the Iranian hostage crisis.
Whenever you get a national thing occur, we get a...
The John Lennon killing was even a better example.
What did Ted Koppel say about your show?
It was a high compliment.
Ted said that we all, in the news delivery business, we deliver the news every
night,
and then drive home and listen to your show and hear what people think about
what we've delivered.
Yeah, it's a fascinating concept and a wonderful show.
Your radio program has pretty much revitalized the notion of network radio
altogether, hasn't it?
Because it was all but down and out.
They're all in now.
ABC's in, RKO, ABC.
These people are all going to compete with your program?
No.
Yeah.
That's fine.
I think that's healthy.
And actually, it's done a lot for us in the marketplace, because, you know,
agencies are very strange people.
Advertising agencies, I don't have to tell you.
Strange.
Yeah.
And so, you can go out and say, we're on 260 stations, and we've got such and
such amount of listeners, and here's the average agent, here's their interests.
And the agency says, yeah, but you're the only one doing it.
You know what I mean?
So, now, as soon as somebody else starts to do it, now agencies say, hey, that's
really interesting.
You know, we ought to buy you.
You were the first.
That's right.
And when you're the first in anything, that always is a nice niche that you
leave for yourself.
You know, I'm convinced that in media especially, if somebody's first, no
matter whatever happens down the road, you've got an edge, because they're
going to compare them to you.
So, let's say, let's say Christ came back, and he decided as the best method to
get attention, he would do a daytime talk show with a studio audience, and he
would walk into the audience.
Donnie would be mentioned everywhere.
That's right.
He'd be compared to Donnie.
That's right.
And some people say, Phil, Phil does a better sermon on the mouth.
Yeah, but he probably wouldn't be dating Marlo Thomas.
That's right.
Let me, uh...
Well, she's Jewish.
No, she's not.
Is there anybody that you would not want as a guest on your show?
I tend not to like psychics.
I think, well, I think psychics are bad radio.
The reason is, it's, a lot of people don't realize this, when you do a radio
show and you're taking calls, only 1% of a call in of your audience.
Never pick up before.
I've never called a call in of your show.
Yeah.
It's, they always used to tell me, the callers are not your audience.
They're not.
Yeah.
They're representative, but they're not.
Mm-hmm.
So, the 1% that calls in to speak to a psychic is doing it for self-involvement.
It's, I never let a caller be self-involved.
By that, I mean, if I get a doctor on the show and a caller calls, I'm going to
force that caller to make the question general.
Because you're driving alone in the car at night, and you hear a psychic gone,
and a guy goes up and says, next Tuesday, I'm born November 8th, should I sell
my house?
And the psychic says, well, you shouldn't sell your house.
And, you know, psychics, they just, so I think it's just a service to the
caller.
Yeah.
And they're great.
I could do psychics.
We do a takeoff on psychics.
We have a friend of mine that plays a guy named Gork up on the planet Fringus.
It's 29 days ahead of the planet Earth.
Gork sees all, knows all, tells all, and it's a total takeoff of psychics.
Now, people call in.
The guy's on another planet, right?
And they say, I know you're kidding, but should I sell a house?
Another thing about psychics.
Sure.
I got a daughter with a very unusual name.
Her name is Kaya.
C-H-A-I-A.
It's an old Hebraic name.
It means to life.
No psychic has ever said to me, who's Kaya?
You know what I mean?
They'll always say to you, I don't even know your life named Bob.
You'll always say, Bob, I know a Bob.
Very important to you.
And if you say, I don't know a Bob, they say you're going to meet one tomorrow.
Psychics are the least interesting to me.
I know this must have happened to you.
You can't have this job without it happening to you.
But they're frightening experiences, odd people getting a little closer than
you want them to be.
Yeah.
That can scare you.
The night Lennon was killed, a guy called from Salt Lake City, and he said he
was an immense
fan of the show, and he listened every night, and he was very troubled.
And in fact, he had driven his car up the statehouse steps that night in Utah.
And we got to talk about Lennon, and obviously we had known by then that the
guy who had shot
Lennon was a fan of Lennon's, was carrying his album.
So I said to the guy, could you kill me?
And he said he could.
And I said, why?
He said, well, you know, I guess you're everything I want to be, and I can't be
it.
So I would kill you.
Now that is frightening, but you can't take that home with you.
No, but what do you do as far as, I mean, do you have a file of these calls?
I try, you report it, you make a tape of it, you send it in.
You get, the death threat kind of thing is overdone.
You get occasional things like that.
I don't think you can let it worry you.
I don't think you can leave a studio and think about it.
But it must be this voice coming out of the night from Salt Lake City or
wherever.
Scary.
You love baseball, you know baseball.
Oh, by the way, yesterday, I went to the Met game.
Freddie Wilpon, who's the president of Met's, went to the same school as I did,
Lafayette High School.
The world's greatest high school.
And, uh, hubcaps on moving cars.
And I sat with Freddie Wilpon in his box, and then after the game, we were with
Frank Cashin, the general manager.
And he says, what are you doing in New York?
And I said, I'm going on a David Letterman show.
And he said, David Letterman's a big baseball fan.
He snapped his fingers.
He says, send David Letterman a jacket.
Send David Letterman a hat.
That's right.
Tell David Letterman to come out here and work out with the Mets.
So I'm officially invited to tell you the Mets are waiting.
Those people have been very nice to me.
They sent me both the jacket and the hat.
Already?
Already.
Or maybe I'm getting another one.
Or did they send the fish?
They sent something.
Are you a baseball fan?
Oh, I love baseball.
To me, it's the only sport.
I mean, the rest are okay.
And I'm a fan of all sports.
You also like, well, excuse me here a second.
Now, what are we doing?
We got more stuff coming?
All right.
Mr. King will stay here, hopefully.
And let's just see what's coming in now.
I know.
She's right back there with the fish.
Isn't that wonderful?
My...
I just love poodles.
We got to pause here.
We're coming back.
Don't you...

Larry King And The People Who Call Into His Show | Letterman

My next guest spends five and a half hours, five and a half hours a night, five
nights
a week, talking and listening to Americans who call in from all over the
country to have
their say on his national radio program.
The success of this program is one of the most remarkable broadcasting stories
of the
last few years.
Please welcome Mr. Larry King.
Larry King.
I find your program fascinating, refreshing, and I tried to describe it in the
opening.
There's something about driving in your car or in your home, not driving your
car, in
your home, listening to your radio program late at night that's very satisfying.
And I don't know what that illusion or image or impression is, but it's
something magical
about hearing people from all over the country.
I don't know what it is either.
I think you're kind of at the heartbeat of America.
You sit there in this radio studio, I look out the window on the capital of the
United
States, and suddenly you hear voices, Mobile, Dallas, New York, Miami, and
there's kind
of a conglomeration of America all in one room.
And I think that comes through the airwaves.
There's something about it.
After the guest leaves every night and we're doing open phones, people might
call about,
what do you think of David Letterman?
People might call about baseball races.
People might call about, what do you think about popcorn being delivered to a
television
studio?
Anything.
But there's that magical thing.
You've hit it.
I don't know how to word it.
You know, Studs Terkel, who was here recently, said it's kind of like a
composite of America.
It's Walt Whitman-esque.
I don't know.
I just know it's fun to do.
Yeah.
And I think if I didn't enjoy it, the audience wouldn't enjoy it.
I enjoy it.
It's a great show.
And you're perfect for that time of night.
Your voice just seems to suit the hour perfectly.
Let me ask you, assuming that what we've described here is true, that you are
sampling all corners
of America.
Have you ever, since you've been doing the show, seen differences of opinion
come from different
parts of the country or seen one general attitude change over the course of
months?
Well, when I first started, you could get a call and sense an attitude, like
Seattle would
be more liberal than Biloxi.
That's been changing.
There's a kind of, maybe it's due to all of us in this business we're in,
accents are changing.
You don't hear accents anymore, especially if someone's under 30.
We've had an effect on that because, you know, media, they don't hire.
So the local disc jockey doesn't have a southern accent anymore.
And there's also, when you get on a certain topic, you can, America's a lot
smarter than
we think.
At least a lot smarter than people in Washington think.
People are sharper.
They're in tune with things more.
And now I sense there's a kind of, like you take a thing like nuclear power.
Man, there's a national consensus on that.
And I think President Reagan hipped onto it over the weekend.
That people don't want nuclear bombs near them.
The threat, what that's done to us, there's a national think on that.
So you can't say, well, Dallas is going to be more conservative than New York
on the subject.
That's gone.
Yeah.
This point of a nuclear power, is that as a result, do you think of, well, this
is not
really, like a three-mile island.
Has that changed everybody's notion?
That started.
And then the election of Mr. Reagan, who was a hardliner, who challenged the
Russians, at
least verbally.
So we became more aware of it.
No salt to talks.
The Russians talking tough.
And then suddenly the natural reaction off that, that we all start saying, hey,
we could
be gone tomorrow.
And that's very frightening.
In fact, you and I could be sitting talking, and in one minute, one guy
somewhere hits
a button, and we're gone.
Yeah.
I've had that happen.
Let me ask you another question about this.
I find this to be fascinating.
There are constantly polls, opinion polls, how is the president doing?
Do you notice any correspondence or relationship to the calls you get to what
the polls indicate
the next week?
Definitely.
Yeah.
I think we're a compendium.
It's not an exact science because we're not taking a poll.
And callers are calling of their own volition.
They're paying long distance charges.
They call every night.
We get a wide variety of people calling.
But I'd say, like if you were to take the national consensus on Ronald Reagan,
he is very popular,
but there's a kind of quiet hesitation about, is this going to work?
So I would say that he retains his personal popularity.
The polls show that.
Is the program going to work?
Negative.
And the polls show that.
And we reflect that.
We get a pretty good reflection.
Yeah.
And then there's also the sense of America about that show.
You know, there's a lot of people up at night.
10% of the population is up.
Many people may not realize that.
There's a potential to watch this show tonight of 20 million people.
They're doing all sorts of things.
We used to think they were insomniacs.
They're not.
Yeah.
What do you find your audience to be, generally?
Well, their average age is 31.
I'll bet a tremendous amount of the audience tonight's going crazy, like
watching you and listening.
I think we get it.
Well, that's right.
Now, after the show, you're going to go back to Washington and do your show
tonight.
Right.
And we'll be on opposite each other.
Now, tonight at 3 a.m. Eastern time, when we go to Open Phone America, after
the guest leaves, I'll get calls about this show.
You know, people will call in to reflect what I thought of you.
You know, were you better than Tom?
We'll get...
We'll get reaction to you.
Now, I've always been an admirer of yours.
I'm a fan of yours.
Thank you very much.
I think you're terrific.
Thank you, sir.
This audience...
Awfully nice to you.
I mean, I want to say, you know, guests on shows never talk...
Because they want to talk about themselves that are selling a book or something.
This show.
I mean, what other show in the history of American radio can have a United
States senator, Rhodes Scholar, and bring a live or dead fish into that studio?
Yeah.
Now, what you have at home in America is, the hip people all understand this.
So anybody under 40 who's really grooving knows what you're doing.
But I'm trying to imagine the little old lady in Des Moines who's watching
Senator Bradley because she's waiting to hear about tax reductions.
And a fish comes across this door.
Or you were about to introduce me, and a guy came in with eight bags of popcorn.
Yeah, yeah.
And that girl who came to see the show has not seen the show yet.
No, she's back there.
Your show, tell me about the...
Now, what you mentioned there is a real functioning part of your show.
People tune in to hear what America is thinking.
It's really two shows in one.
For the first three hours, we have a guest.
The guest, we do an interview for an hour, then two hours of phone calls for
the guest, like we'll do with you.
You'll come on, I'll interview you for an hour.
Then two hours of calls.
Then you leave.
And at 3 to 5, Eastern time, we take calls from everywhere about anything.
The guest is gone, so it could be about politics, baseball, religion, anything.
It just sweeps across America, and it's really fun.
The day that President Reagan was shot, that was a real indicator for you, wasn't
it?
That, the Iranian hostage crisis.
Whenever you get a national thing occur, we get a...
The John Lennon killing was even a better example.
What did Ted Koppel say about your show?
It was a high compliment.
Ted said that we all, in the news delivery business, we deliver the news every
night,
and then drive home and listen to your show and hear what people think about
what we've delivered.
Yeah, it's a fascinating concept and a wonderful show.
Your radio program has pretty much revitalized the notion of network radio
altogether, hasn't it?
Because it was all but down and out.
They're all in now.
ABC's in, RKO, ABC.
These people are all going to compete with your program?
No.
Yeah.
That's fine.
I think that's healthy.
And actually, it's done a lot for us in the marketplace, because, you know,
agencies are very strange people.
Advertising agencies, I don't have to tell you.
Strange.
Yeah.
And so, you can go out and say, we're on 260 stations, and we've got such and
such amount of listeners, and here's the average agent, here's their interests.
And the agency says, yeah, but you're the only one doing it.
You know what I mean?
So, now, as soon as somebody else starts to do it, now agencies say, hey, that's
really interesting.
You know, we ought to buy you.
You were the first.
That's right.
And when you're the first in anything, that always is a nice niche that you
leave for yourself.
You know, I'm convinced that in media especially, if somebody's first, no
matter whatever happens down the road, you've got an edge, because they're
going to compare them to you.
So, let's say, let's say Christ came back, and he decided as the best method to
get attention, he would do a daytime talk show with a studio audience, and he
would walk into the audience.
Donnie would be mentioned everywhere.
That's right.
He'd be compared to Donnie.
That's right.
And some people say, Phil, Phil does a better sermon on the mouth.
Yeah, but he probably wouldn't be dating Marlo Thomas.
That's right.
Let me, uh...
Well, she's Jewish.
No, she's not.
Is there anybody that you would not want as a guest on your show?
I tend not to like psychics.
I think, well, I think psychics are bad radio.
The reason is, it's, a lot of people don't realize this, when you do a radio
show and you're taking calls, only 1% of a call in of your audience.
Never pick up before.
I've never called a call in of your show.
Yeah.
It's, they always used to tell me, the callers are not your audience.
They're not.
Yeah.
They're representative, but they're not.
Mm-hmm.
So, the 1% that calls in to speak to a psychic is doing it for self-involvement.
It's, I never let a caller be self-involved.
By that, I mean, if I get a doctor on the show and a caller calls, I'm going to
force that caller to make the question general.
Because you're driving alone in the car at night, and you hear a psychic gone,
and a guy goes up and says, next Tuesday, I'm born November 8th, should I sell
my house?
And the psychic says, well, you shouldn't sell your house.
And, you know, psychics, they just, so I think it's just a service to the
caller.
Yeah.
And they're great.
I could do psychics.
We do a takeoff on psychics.
We have a friend of mine that plays a guy named Gork up on the planet Fringus.
It's 29 days ahead of the planet Earth.
Gork sees all, knows all, tells all, and it's a total takeoff of psychics.
Now, people call in.
The guy's on another planet, right?
And they say, I know you're kidding, but should I sell a house?
Another thing about psychics.
Sure.
I got a daughter with a very unusual name.
Her name is Kaya.
C-H-A-I-A.
It's an old Hebraic name.
It means to life.
No psychic has ever said to me, who's Kaya?
You know what I mean?
They'll always say to you, I don't even know your life named Bob.
You'll always say, Bob, I know a Bob.
Very important to you.
And if you say, I don't know a Bob, they say you're going to meet one tomorrow.
Psychics are the least interesting to me.
I know this must have happened to you.
You can't have this job without it happening to you.
But they're frightening experiences, odd people getting a little closer than
you want them to be.
Yeah.
That can scare you.
The night Lennon was killed, a guy called from Salt Lake City, and he said he
was an immense
fan of the show, and he listened every night, and he was very troubled.
And in fact, he had driven his car up the statehouse steps that night in Utah.
And we got to talk about Lennon, and obviously we had known by then that the
guy who had shot
Lennon was a fan of Lennon's, was carrying his album.
So I said to the guy, could you kill me?
And he said he could.
And I 