How To Create a Heavenly Host

By James Poniewozik

This week, Regis Philbin returns to Prime Time, hosting a show called America's Got Talent (NBC, Wednesdays, 9 p.m. E.T.). That is ironic, because while America may have talent, Regis does not. At least, he says, that's what he thought when he became a San Diego TV host almost a half-century ago. "I wasn't a comedian or a singer or a dancer," he says. "I didn't have any of the abilities you need to succeed in this business." It wasn't until 1967, when he became second banana on Joey Bishop's late-night ABC show, that the Rat Packer told Philbin he chose him for his special talent. "I said, 'What is it?'" Philbin recalls. "I was on pins and needles. He said, 'You! You are a great listener!' Which was not the answer I was hoping for."

Philbin is being--as much as a man can be who regularly refers to himself in the third person--modest. By one objective measure, he is TV's most successful host ever: he holds the Guinness record for most hours on camera (15,188, and counting). When the aliens who have monitored our broadcast signals invade, they will demand to negotiate the terms of our surrender with Regis. Now the producers of American Idol are hoping he will do for their new Ed Sullivanesque variety competition (one auditioner balances a 300-lb. oven on his face) what he did for another retro summer show called Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. "Every demographic loves him," says Talent executive producer Ken Warwick. "When we bring him onstage, the audience absolutely erupts. He can ask exactly the question that everyone is dying to know and wring as much humor out of it as possible."

Clearly the man is good at something. But what? That's the stumper. Hosting is perhaps the highest-profile job on TV (Oprah, Ellen, Rosie: host, host, host) and the worst defined. It's not comedy, though many comics have done it. It's not acting, though actors have--as well as Tony Danza. There are no host schools. There was no Greek muse of hosting. A host plays himself. He talks to people. Sometimes, if the job is especially tricky, he has to hold a microphone. It is a job that, theoretically, anyone can do but that talented people have done terribly. (Sorry, Roseanne.) So with millions of dollars riding on the choice--and a raft of daytime and prime-time chat and competition shows searching for talent--what is, as Simon Cowell would say on Idol, the "X factor" that makes the perfect host?

Or put it another way: What is it that makes a prime-time star out of Howie Mandel, a guy whose claim to fame used to be inflating a latex glove with his nose? Says Mandel, of NBC's Deal or No Deal: Part of it is hard work. The comic and former St. Elsewhere co-star pooh-poohed the job when it was offered--"I couldn't see myself reading trivia questions off a card"--but one backed-up money truck later, he calls it "the most creative thing I've ever done." Executive producer Scott St. John says Mandel had the background to straddle the show's light and dark moments, as agonized contestants, egged on by briefcase-bearing babes, risk certain cash for a shot at $1 million. "We wanted someone who could handle the drama and allow those moments to play out," St. John says.

Mandel's sleazy, Luciferian Deal persona is not exactly friendly, but it befits a show about sex, greed and temptation. And it's a sign of how hosting has changed since the Beat the Clock era. Says Merv Griffin, the former talk-show host and now billionaire talk- and game-show mogul: Time was, "you hired an M.C. who every mother-in-law would love." But in the reality-TV era, talk and game shows allow, if not require, more edge. We've gone from Bill Cullen's genial cheerleading to Gordon Ramsay's four-letter culinary arias on Hell's Kitchen and Jeff Probst's tribal-council interrogations on Survivor. Once Rosie O'Donnell was a Broadway-belting ball of sunshine; now she's a pugilistic, out-lesbian activist--which probably made her a perfect choice to join the morning free-for-all on The View.

One thing producers agree on: it takes a lot of work and constant alertness to make hosting look like something a well-coiffed orangutan could do. By which measure Ryan Seacrest is the greatest TV personality who has ever lived. "You've got to be able to have the wind knocked out of your sails, like when Simon attacks Ryan, and bounce back," says Idol executive producer Nigel Lythgoe. Ur-host Griffin--who once hired Seacrest for a failed game show but is not a producer of Idol--gushes over Seacrest's stage-managing of the live show, whiplashing from moments of snark to heartbreak to comedy faster than you can say Seacrest out! "Oh, boy, he's terrific," Griffin says. "He conducts thousands of people in the audience, the judges, people onstage. He's an improviser. He's freewheeling. He does it all."

Sure, it's easy to call Seacrest glitzy and vapid. Heck, let's do it: he is perfect for Idol because he so gamely embodies its glitziness and vapidity. Everything about his precision-moussed pate and cliffs-of-Dover grin screams, You are watching a show about show biz! But this is why the man can afford the finest hair gels and dentrifices: the successful host is wise enough to be the fool. There are exceptions, like the beneficent and vengeful god Oprah, but America tends to like its TV hosts risible: fussy Alex Trebek, funny-haired Donald Trump, screwball Kelly Ripa. "Being fallible works to my advantage," says Ricki Lake, who has gone from the queen of train-wreck talk to the cheerfully awkward M.C. of CBS's Gameshow Marathon.

Likewise, Philbin's carefully crafted irascibility is what allows the wealthy superstar to double as your crotchety 74-year-old uncle. At a recent Live with Regis and Kelly taping, he groused about sitting in first class on a flight from Italy, getting clocked in the head by people hauling their luggage to the back of the plane. "Nobody checks bags anymore!" he expostulated, while the audience--tourists in sweatshirts still damp from waiting for tickets in a pouring rain--hooted and laughed as a millionaire lectured them on how properly to fly coach.

There is, finally, a Zen paradox to hosting. You must be a celebrity and a commoner; you must be present and absent, ceding your guests the spotlight; you must know what to say and, more important, what not to. Several hosts and producers interviewed for this article repeated the importance of "getting out of the way" of the show. Seacrest says that his job is to make Idol "clever," but adds, "That doesn't mean I say something clever. I know when Simon is gearing up to say something. I can read it on his face. A host has to allow space for moments to be created."

That may explain why a self-effacing comic like Ellen DeGeneres became a hit and an un-shut-uppable genius like Roseanne bombed. "So many producers have wasted millions of dollars on people who are great talk-show guests but not great talk-show hosts," says Live with Regis and Kelly executive producer Michael Gelman. A host must subordinate his or her identity in service of the larger work--what the poet John Keats referred to as "negative capability," although he was talking about verse, not wearing pinstripes and doing product placements for Coke.

Indeed, even Philbin--the guy who does monologues about every dinner he eats and when he hosted Millionaire proclaimed, "I'm saving the network!"--finally says the key to the job is remembering that it's not about you. Whether you're talking to George Clooney or a guy with an oven on his face, it's about "putting aside your ego and making your guests be better with you than they would with anybody else."

In other words, it's about being a good listener. Turns out that really is a talent.

With reporting by Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles