Seacrest the invisible

Nice portrait (by Michael Muller) that goes with a profile of Ryan Seacrest by Amanda Fortini in today's T Magazine in the New York Times. She calls Seacrest the invisible man despite his seemingly ubiquitous presence in the media of pop culture: "As certain celebrities become more visible, they also become less noticeable, almost merging with the media landscape."

Though he is probably best known as the host of “American Idol,” the country’s top-rated television show, he can also be found on the radio, Monday through Friday, hosting “On-Air with Ryan Seacrest,” a program that mixes pop music, celebrity interviews and juicy tabloid banter....“On-Air” ’s home station is the Los Angeles-based KIIS-FM, but there is also a national version syndicated on more than 130 stations in 45 states and at least four countries. (One journalist, writing in the National Post, described the “bewildering experience” of driving through the United States and “hearing Seacrest in seemingly every town, no matter what time of day it was.”)

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Meanwhile, back on television, between occasional stints filling in for Larry King on “Larry King Live,” he is a co-anchor of “E! News,” a half-hour celebrity gossip roundup that broadcasts seven nights a week, and somehow also finds time to lead the network’s red-carpet coverage of the Grammys, the Emmys, the Oscars and the Golden Globes. Finally, once a year, on New Year’s Eve, eight and a half million people tune in to see his breath fog up in Times Square as he welcomes the New Year alongside the longtime host Dick Clark. If that’s not enough, he also Twitters, constantly.

Plus this: "From the time he was a kid growing up in suburban Atlanta, the son of a lawyer father and homemaker mother, Seacrest’s goal was to become what he calls 'a classic iconic broadcaster' in the vein of Merv Griffin and other media ringmasters."

More NYT: Former L.A. Times staff writer and foreign correspondent Richard C. Paddock is writing for the Bay Area pages of the New York Times.

Photo: Michael Muller / T Magazine