LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Larry King: Radio
built 627 days ago
A CBS staff announcer, whom King met by chance, told him to go to Florida, a growing media market where openings still existed for inexperienced broadcasters. King rode a bus to Miami. After initial setbacks, King got his first job in radio through persistence. The manager of a small station, WIOD in Miami Beach, hired him to clean up and perform miscellaneous tasks. When one of their announcers quit, they put King on the air. His first broadcast was on May 1, 1957, when he worked as the disc jockey from 9 a.m.
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[I]t was during a moment of “silence” that King learned the greatest lesson of his journalistic journey. It happened on Larry’s first day on the job as a radio announcer, a day he had dreamed about since he was a little boy. In his dreams... he never imagined that he’d be gripped by fear when the mike he so longed for was open. When the “do or die” moment was finally before him, King froze and was simply not able to speak. He was certainly in “doubt,” but had “left all of it out!” The result was dead airtime on the radio. King’s boss stormed into his booth and said, “This is the communications business, so communicate!” So on May 1, 1957, at WAHR in Miami Beach, Florida, Larry King found his voice and has not stopped talking ever since.
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King managed to get back into radio by becoming the color commentator for broadcasts of the Shreveport Steamer of the World Football League on KWKH. Eventually, King was rehired by WIOD in Miami. In 1978 he went national, inheriting the nightly talk show slot on the Mutual Radio Network, broadcast coast-to-coast, that had been "Long John" Nebel's until his death, and had been pioneered by Herb Jepko. One reason King got the Mutual job is because he had once been an announcer at WGMA-AM in Hollywood, Florida, which was then owned by C. Edward Little. Little went on to become president of Mutual and was the one who hired King when Nebel died. King's Mutual show developed a devoted audience.
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