Larry King to End Nightly CNN Show

Saying "it's time to hang up my nightly suspenders," Larry King has announced his CNN show will end this fall after a quarter century of interviewing presidents, senators, kings, queens, criminals, scandal-mongers, and celebrities.

"25 years ago, I sat across this table from New York Governor Mario Cuomo for the first broadcast of 'Larry King Live'," King wrote on his show's blog. "Now, decades later, I talked to the guys here at CNN and I told them I would like to end 'Larry King Live,' the nightly show, this fall and CNN has graciously accepted, giving me more time for my wife and I to get to the kids' little league games."

King, 76, said he'll remain with CNN to host specials.

"Larry King Live" recently made the Guinness Book of World Records for having the longest running show with the same host in the same time slot.

Despite dropping in the ratings in recent months, the show has remained a prominent outlet for newsmakers to tell their stories, from O.J. Simpson to Octomom and Monica Lewinsky to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. King, always wearing suspenders and dark-rimmed glasses, is known for asking straightforward questions and giving guests time to talk.

Seemingly every major politician has scheduled a campaign stop to sit across from King's signature vintage microphone. During their 2008 presidential runs, Barack Obama and John McCain made multiple appearances. Billionaire Ross Perot announced he was running for president in 1992 on the program. And the show was the setting for the historic NAFTA debate between then-Vice President Al Gore and Perot in 1993, which for more than a decade was the highest-rated program in cable history, according to CNN.

King has sat down with every U.S. president since Richard Nixon. CNN said King has interviewed more than 50,000 people, "including Marlon Brando, Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Paul McCartney, Bob Hope, Frank Sinatra, L. Ron Hubbard, Madonna and Martin Luther King, Jr."

The network has not confirmed published reports that British television personality Piers Morgan will succeed King in the 9 p.m. ET slot.