Seacrest: bad news for CNN

Ryan Seacrest rose to media fame and fortune as the nice-guy foil to Simon Cowell on American Idol. He became the American America loves to love in inverse proportion to Cowell's rise as the Brit that America loves to hate.

As singers wither under Cowell's brutal truths, Seacrest assures them they are wonderful. He speaks to American optimism, however fatuous. He can thank Cowell for catapulting him to an income estimated at $14m a year by Forbes magazine.

That is fine. But Seacrest is now tipped by 'insiders' to inherit CNN's nightly Larry King Live at the end of the year. This would be preposterous if it were not so easily explained.

Seacrest is the ultimate in vanilla sponge broadcasting and CNN wants his ratings. The channel that invented cable news is that desperate as it fades in the face of competition. Seacrest has sat in for King and last year King said he was 'a natural' to replace him.

It will be a giant step in the castration of American journalism. The Bush years have already seen reporters reduced to patsies by Washington's 'embedding' and threats to refuse access. Failure to speak truth to power has crippled media credibility. Just when America needs its Jeremy Paxman it is poised to get its Vernon Kay.

Seacrest makes Larry King (left), whose journalistic signature is the soft-ball question, look heavyweight. His laid-back style, even avoiding research before the interview, at least gets the reluctant before the camera. In 51 years he has interviewed 40,000 people. They include every president since Gerald Ford, Tony Blair, Frank Sinatra, Yasser Arafat and Monica Lewinsky. His 'debate' between Al Gore and maverick presidential candidate Ross Perot scored the highest cable rating ever. He casts a giant shadow.

King himself said this of Seacrest: "The only thing I don't know is how versed he is in politics, world affairs. Does he read the paper? Is he interested in Iraq?"

Was King joking? Seacrest, 34, has a CV which reads like this: morning announcements at High School; afternoon DJ at Star 98.7 radio in Los Angeles; game show host of Gladiators 2000, Wild Animal Games, and Click; substitute host for E! channel's Talk Soup.

Seacrest is of Swedish descent and comes from a comfortable family in Atlanta. He has been tested by two personal controversies: his height, which he says is 5' 9" and everyone else 5' 5"; and his sexuality. To Stepping Out magazine he admitted to liking clothes shopping but said in his case that was not a "gay male habit" but a "straight male habit". Stuff magazine named him 'American poster boy for metrosexuality'.

Larry King is larger than life. He was born to a New York Jewish garment worker, got into trouble for bouncing cheques, rose the hard way, married six women - one of them, a Playboy bunny, twice - has five children, and gave up smoking only after a near-fatal heart attack.

Seacrest was once seen hugging actress Mary-Kate Olsen and in March was ranked Number 7 in a list of 'The 100 unsexiest men in the world'. He could be the poster-boy for the un-manning of the American media, in both senses of the word. ·