Television: How To Create a Heavenly Host

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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.