An hours-long car "chase" (average speed, 35 mph) started it all. America was obsessed with the O.J. Simpson murder trial from the moment the white Ford Bronco hit the freeway to the minute the infamous "not guilty" verdict was read. We listened on the radio on the way to work, watched at lunchtime and at night tuned in for the latest scoop. As Jeffery Toobin, CNN's senior legal analyst told The New York Times, the long-running O.J. Simpson trial, which played out nightly on Larry King, was in some ways the perfect story for King "because it combined high and low; you had important issues about justice and race, and the sleaziest celebrities in Los Angeles."
When King began his broadcast on June 17, 1994 his producers told him to go live to footage of the white Ford Bronco. For the next two and a half hours Larry anchored an event that drew in two-thirds of the nation's television households and eventually led to the football star's surrender. Nodding to the incredible impact O.J. chase and subsequent trial had on his show, King once told his viewers, "If we had God booked and O.J. was available, we'd move God."