Bob Costas: Not The Next The Larry King?

The idea that Bob Costas could be an eventual successor to Larry King wasn’t part of Jon Klein‘s thinking when he courted the HBO interviewer, according to the Associated Press. (Yeah right.)

“Larry King is far and away the superstar of CNN and if you list any of the areas we need to address at CNN, 9 o’clock Sunday through Thursday is not on the list,” Klein says.

As a “regular substitute host,” Costas will conduct primetime interviews about 20 times a year.

> As previously noted on TVNewser, King’s May ratings were his worst in four years. He averaged 970,000 viewers. “He just doesn’t deliver the viewers the way he used to and never will again,” an e-mailer says.

> An e-mailer suggestion: ” If I were running my old network I’d put Bob Costas on Monday through Thursday at 9 PM beginning in 2006, give Larry King the other three days of the week and call him the King of Weekends.”