Television: How To Create a Heavenly Host

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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.