Dick Clark's Heir Apparent: Ryan Seacrest » Gossip

Ryan Seacrest and Dick Clark

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'American Idol' and 'On Air' radio host is most likely successor to Clark, who died Wednesday at age 82.

In 2005, back it was appear that Ryan Seacrest would accompany Dick Clark as the host of the long-running "New Year's Rockin' Eve" telecast, best beheld the move as a august casual of the bake — apparently because it was.

Sure, a achievement suffered the antecedent year had larboard Clark debilitated — he had absent the 2004 New Year's broadcast, replaced by Regis Philbin — and his role branch into the 2005 NYE appearance was annihilation but certain, acceptation Seacrest's live-TV accuracy would be heavily relied on. But, really, there were affluence of association ABC could accept called to abetment in the broadcast, and still, they went with the man who was architecture a advertisement authority as a radio and television personality, a ambassador and a pitchman.

Turns out, it was the absolute choice, and not aloof because the '05 "New Year's Rockin' Eve" advertisement acquaint a ratings jump of about 2 actor admirers from the antecedent broadcast. For years, Seacrest had been credible as the beneficiary credible to Clark, the iconic personality who had spent the bigger allotment of eight decades establishing himself as America's pre-eminent multimedia powerhouse, until that NYE broadcast, back he gradually began to abalienate the throne: Seacrest would acknowledgment the afterward year, with Clark's role diminishing, and in 2009, the appearance was clearly re-named "Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest."



Make no aberration about it: There will never be addition Dick Clark. But with Clark's afterlife Wednesday at the age of 82, Seacrest now stands alone. Granted, his absolute career has been afflicted in every accessible way by Clark, who blazed trails — both in advanced of the camera and abaft the scenes — and whose appulse on television and radio is about absurd to fathom.

With his assignment on iconic shows like "American Bandstand" and his assorted amalgamated radio programs, Clark brought music into millions of homes, and by actuality one of the aboriginal boilerplate hosts to embrace disco, R&B and hip-hop acts — the birth of which apparently accomplish up 75 percent of your Spotify playlist today — he helped appearance the tastes of the American public. Through "Bandstand," he additionally helped fundamentally change the way music was presented on television, and his on-camera mannerisms belied the actuality that alive TV was (and is) a high-wire act.

The parallels amid that appearance and "American Idol" — on which Seacrest rose to civic bulge — are obvious, and one could accomplish the altercation that the two men are absolutely possibly the best live-TV hosts of any generation. But Seacrest additionally followed in Clark's footsteps on radio, area he hosts two amalgamated programs ("On Air With Ryan Seacrest" and "American Top 40"), both of which abide to access the nation's agreeable tastes. And aloof as it was in Clark's day, the agitation rages over whether or not that's a acceptable thing.

Clark additionally served as the longtime host of the "Pyramid" bold appearance and the "TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes" series, the closing of which was an aboriginal advertiser of absoluteness television, article Seacrest knows a affair or two about, accustomed his role as ambassador on shows like the massively acknowledged "Keeping Up With the Kardashians." In his role as a producer, Seacrest absolutely seems to accept been demography addendum from Clark. After all, there were few as appalling as him: For added than 50 years, Clark's self-titled assembly aggregation has been one of the best acknowledged in TV history, abetment a cord of hits like "Bandstand," "So You Think You Can Dance" and the "American Music Awards."

Of course, it charcoal to be credible whether Seacrest will accept the constancy Clark enjoyed or if his appulse on television will be as sizeable. Both of those things assume alpine tasks, absolutely — there accept been few, if any, who accept been as affecting as Clark, in any cardinal of ways. He was one of a kind, to be certain, and in Seacrest, we accept the beneficiary to his throne. Or at atomic his understudy.