American Idol’s Ryan Seacrest Now True “King of All Media”

With Howard Stern’s retreat from the FCC to satellite radio (and huge dollars) and attendant reduction in reach — how many people do you know who USED to listen to Stern? — the real and true King of All Media is about 20 years younger and a foot shorter than Howard: Ryan Seacrest.

Seacrest will have to clone himself to squeeze in any additional activities after he begins his new role as lead anchor and managing editor of E! News on Monday, March 13 at 7:00 PM ET/PT. Seacrest has already built a new nest at the network’s Wilshire Blvd. headquarters, and begins his new E! News job one week after wrapping the network’s Oscar Red Carpet coverage.

Seacrest will lend a dollop of humanity and — yes, I said it — class to breathless E! celebrity news coverage doing star interviews, reporting scoops on trends, award shows moments, and — most invasive and popular of all — celebrity pairings, unpairings, and repairings. The American Idol host signed a comprehensive agreement with E! in January to develop and produce multiple series projects, serve as Executive Producer of E!’s Live From the Red Carpet, host a series of interview specials via his Ryan Seacrest Productions, and run and anchor the news.

So he’s got the absurdly popular Idol, now storming through season five; E!; is a fill-in host for CNN’s Larry King Live nightly talk show; and oh yeah, radio: A new state-of-the-art studio is currently under construction at E! Networks to house “the world’s most popular radio countdown show, American Top 40 and Seacrest’s wildly popular L.A. morning drive-time radio show for Clear Channel’s 102.7 KIIS-FM.

So, despite the popularity and longevity of Stern, 52, he has not developed anything close to the empire that Seacrest, 31, has — most of it in just the last five years! — as the diminutive dynamo overtly patterns himself after entertainment moguls Dick Clark and Merv Griffin.