Good Guest/Bad Host

(From CircleWipe/Cynopsis)

Watch out! Here comes another TV season!

New talk shows a-launching. Names we tripped over in various corners of the medium are now, as if by magic, HOSTS!

Sitcom actors, advice givers, cooks, comics, relationship authors, psychiatrists, designers...

How is it that syndication execs convince themselves year after year, decade after decade, that a celeb who turns in
a solid guest spot = HOST?

Not so fast.

The evidence -- CHEVY CHASE, ALAN THICKE, SUZANNE SOMERS, MARILU HENNER, TONY DANZA, JOAN RIVERS, WAYNE BRADY, GABRIELLE CARTERIS, ROSEANNE BARR, TEMPESTT BLEDSOE, CHARLES GRODIN, JANE PRATT,
JOHN WALSH, JACK FORD, QUEEN LATIFAH, JOHN McENROE, DENNIS MILLER...

Stated plainly -- every one of these folks is a great guest.
No question.

In their prime (even after their prime), any producer would book them in a minute. Give them multiple segments.
Stretch them out over a week. Have them do regular features.

But their own show? Five days a week?
26 or more weeks a year?

Where they have to show up every day with fresh material,
be genuinely curious, insightful, inventive, gracious, put their egos on hold for 30 out of the 44 minutes in order to let their guests shine?

It's harder than it looks when JEFF GORDON or DONALD TRUMP sits in for REGIS PHILBIN or when MEGAN MULLALLY sat in for LETTERMAN one night. Those shows are well-oiled machines with safety nets galore developed over time.

No substitute host is ever left dangling too long, unchaperoned with a single guest who may or may not have something to say. There are escape hatches.

DR. PHIL learned in the school of the best, OPRAH, with enormous support and structure from the Oprah machine.
Others haven't been so shrewd, or so lucky.

We'll watch this month as GREG BEHRENDT who did entertaining guest spots for his books, an appealing MEGAN MULLALLY who charmed us on WILL AND GRACE, the delightful RACHAEL RAY who knows food and how to make it (and has a vocabulary beyond "Mmmmmmmm!"), and psychiatrist KEITH ABLOW who aims to help us find recipes for our lives, make their way into the pantheon of talk show hosts.

Let's hope that at least one syndication executive put a bet on a great guest who can rise to the role of great host.

Then, we all win.