news helicopters eventually joined the pursuit; Tur compared the fleet to Apocalypse Now, and the high degree of media participation caused camera signals to appear on incorrect television channels. The chase was so long that one helicopter ran out of fuel, forcing its station to ask another for a camera feed. Knowing that Cowlings was listening to KNX-AM, sports announcer Pete Arbogast called Simpson's former USC football coach John McKay and connected him to Simpson. As both men wept, Simpson told McKay, "OK, Coach, I won’t do anything stupid. I promise" off the air. "There is no doubt in my mind that McKay stopped O.J. from killing himself in the back of that Bronco", Arbogast said. McKay reiterated on radio his pleas to Simpson to turn himself in instead of committing suicide: "My God, we love you, Juice. Just pull over and I'll come out and stand by you all the rest of my life". Walter Payton, Vince Evans, and others from around the country also pleaded with Simpson over radio to surrender. At Parker Center, officials discussed how to persuade Simpson to surrender peacefully. Lange, who had interviewed Simpson about the murders on June 13, realized that he had Simpson's cell phone number and called him repeatedly. A colleague hooked a tape recorder up to Lange's phone and captured a conversation between Lange and Simpson in which Lange repeatedly pleaded with Simpson to "throw the gun out [of] the window" for the sake of his mother and children. Simpson apologized for not turning himself in earlier that day and responded that he was "the only one who deserved to get hurt" and was "just gonna go with Nicole". Simpson asked Lange to "just let me get to the house" and said "I need [the gun] for me". Cowlings's voice is overheard in the recording (after the Bronco had arrived at Simpson's home surrounded by police) pleading with Simpson to surrender and end the chase peacefully. Los Angeles streets emptied and drink orders stopped at bars as people watched on television. Every television network showed the chase; ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and local news outlets interrupted regularly scheduled programming to cover the incident, watched by an estimated 95 million viewers nationwide; only 90 million had watched that year's Super Bowl. While NBC continued coverage of Game 5 of the NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and the Houston Rockets