Michael Moore is on Larry King tonight as a guest (CNN, at 9). Well, why not? Let’s enter Moore’s name into the Larry King Succession Wars. You can almost picture it— Moore with his bulk, insolent ball cap and his seemingly permanent smirk barking at some caller from Alabama, “You’re on the air, Cracker. What fascist drivel do you want to contribute to the discussion?”

Now that Larry and his Red Suspenders are permanently retiring to some off-camera closet, the whole thing has turned into quite a party, I must say. Think of it as a tea party in reverse. While American TV journalism struggles for relevance (i. e., Nielsen numbers), Brits and fellow travelers seem to be coming here to drop anchor in our news, even in prime time. Sunday, for instance, is when Persian-born, English-bred Christiane Amanpour joins ABC’s “This Week,” which was, once upon a time, invented by ultra- American David Brinkley.

I never watched Larry King, but the maneuvering to be his replacement has been great fun to watch. The candidates are:

Piers Morgan, front runner: The frosty sourpuss Brit on the smash-hit “America’s Got Talent.” Think of him as a kind of David Frost-in-reverse — instead of a smiling British import ready to hug America to his cheerful, satiric bosom, here’s a card-carrying master of journalistic intrusion all set to try to goose CNN’s numbers. Back in Britain, Morgan was a showbiz columnist and a former editor of the infamous News of the World, and he is widely known as a TV interviewer with a gift for gussying up rude questions (to Don Draper, the fictional hero of “Mad Men,” which premiered a new season Sunday, he might ask, “What does it mean when ad men like to be slapped around by hookers?”).

We know him best, of course, as the guy who’s happy to buzz some performing incompetent and kill someone’s dream on behalf of the Higher Showbiz. I kind of like the idea of Morgan, actually.

Ryan Seacrest, the sidewinder: Don’t laugh. Simon Cowell’s favorite American whipping boy is Larry’s own candidate for the gig. And he has filled in on occasion. This is where the whole matter gets to be a lot of fun. Asking “American Idol” non-idol Seacrest to be the permanent replacement for King would be CNN’s blatant admission that it is dead in prime time without Celeb Journalism in the Raw. That’s what Seacrest provides over at E! and on his L. A. radio show. In Seacrest’s case, a fair amount of fawning is involved.

Complaints of trivialization would be deafening. The most interesting thing is this: Seacrest is nothing if not a quick study. Give him time to acclimate, and he might prove to be a sneakily good straight news interviewer because—are you ready—he’d have so much less at stake there than he might when the subject is Michael Lohan’s latest bid for attention. Just as Larry’s out-of-it flirtations with senility occasionally had him blustering into very good questions (asked with “Hey, I’m an old guy, what do I know?” insouciance), Seacrest, with his Chip and Dale showbiz sunniness, could get away with interrogating murder.

Katie Couric, the “Fat Chance” candidate: No one gets away with more interrogatory homicide than Couric. But, numbers be damned, she’s turned out to be a major asset to CBS. She doesn’t need the gig—not yet anyway. (Her contract is up next year.)

Joy Behar and Kathy Griffin, the “Say WHAT?” dish queens of last resort (to be used in the case of CNN executives deciding to do a full-goose-murder of their own news network): Think of them as the fire ax and hose on the wall, to be used only in the event of emergency.

But you have to admit, wouldn’t it be fun to hear the howls of pain then over the conflagration of the whole network?

jsimon@buffnews.comnull