Digital Nation by Gary Dretzka

Last week, in an announcement that surprised no one in Hollywood, the world learned that Billy Crystal would return for the eighth time as host of the 2004 Academy Awards ceremony. The only thing that would have made the announcement even less predictable would have been if the academy had gone ahead and revealed what most of us already know: Whoopi Goldberg will return in 2005, Steve Martin in 2006.

You expected Jim Carrey, Mike Myers or Chris Rock? Keep dreaming. You could get better odds on five-time host Johnny Carson coming out of retirement for one magic night - or Bob Hope rising from the dead, for that matter.

The television academy isn't nearly as obsessively conservative as its counterpart on Wilshire Boulevard. Nonetheless, its choices to helm the show never seem to please the critics, who seemingly sharpen their teeth in anticipation of each new awards broadcast.

Not that there's anything wrong with Crystal, Goldberg and Martin, who really have gotten it down to a science by now. The quality of each succeeding show actually depends more on the caliber of comedians recruited by perennial head writer Bruce Vilanch, whose job it is to make everything and everyone look hip, spontaneous and jolly.

I have a better idea.

Although, like Carson, up-and-coming talk-show host Michael Essany has yet to appear in a single movie, the 20-year-old Hoosier has been training for just such a gig for most of his pre-adult life. Thanks to his new reality show on E!, a better class of celebrities has begun flocking to his basement studio in Valparaiso, Ind., on their way in and out of Chicago. Having already made the leap from cable access to cable network, Essany is primed and ready to go national, although he apparently has decided to wait until he graduates from Valparaiso University with degree in political science.

At the moment, the reputations of semi-legendary Valpo basketball coach Homer Drew and popcorn mogul Orville Redenbacher overshadow Essany in his hometown. That all soon could change, however, as Essany continues to hint that he might move his operation 55 miles west, to Chicago, and then L.A. or New York.

When it comes to hosting talk shows, Essany is television's answer to Robert Redford in The Natural. He's been yacking for the camera since he was 14, and has his act down so pat that it's scary, or creepy, take your pick. While his Valparaiso peers look, dress and act like young adults in most zip codes around the country, Essany favors the attire and hair-do of Eugene Levy's classic second-banana, Bobby Bittman. If Jay Leno or David Letterman ever needed an emergency fill-in, the kid would need about 15 minutes to prepare, and he wouldn't miss a beat.

Essany's connection to the movie industry may seem a bit suspect, but consider this: the lad was born in the same year that Martin Scorsese introduced comedian/stalker Rupert Pupkin to the world in The King of Comedy. Lounge lizard Tony Clifton had just released his album of "greatest hits," and was at the height of his, er, popularity. Canada's wonderfully satiric SCTV was also becoming a hit in the U.S.

Based solely on his telegenic qualities, Essany could easily be the bastard child of Pupkin, Clifton or Bittman. No offense, mom.

I was reminded of Pupkin last week, when I screened The King of Comedy - one of Scorsese's least appreciated films - for my genre-studies class at UNLV. Aside from some pretty terrific performances by Jerry Lewis, Sandra Bernhard and Robert De Niro, as Pupkin, everyone was struck by how prophetic Scorsese and screenwriter Paul Zimmerman were about the soon-to-arrive age of celebrity worship in America.

Indeed, The King of Comedy was probably a bit too dead-on prescient for its own good. De Niro and Bernhard were so realistically creepy -- and the comedy so dark -- that audiences avoided it in droves. Today, it wouldn't raise an eyebrow - except in recognition of the sad state of show business and the media.

Like Essany, Pupkin polishes his act in a makeshift studio in the basement of his parents' home. The smarmily dressed comic is convinced that he can become an overnight success, if only he could convince Jerry Langford (Lewis) to give him a five-minute spot on his late-night gabfest. When efforts to cut through the show's bureaucracy fail, Pupkin and a lovestruck stalker named Masha (Bernhard) kidnap Langford, and conspire to hold him hostage until Pupkin is given a slot on the show. Even though Langford is able to break away from Masha in mid-seduction, and Pupkin is subsequently arrested and thrown in jail, the pathetically unfunny comic has the last laugh on everyone.

When Essany got rolling, at the ripe old age of 14, all the personable cable-access wunderkind had to do was attract the attention of one of those clever roving feature reporters for network newsmagazines, and he was on his way. A couple dozen other media jackals then beat a path to his parents' door for stories of their own. By the time he graduated from high school, Essany practically had his pick of cable networks to join.

To his credit, Essany decided to finish school, instead. He did agree, however, to allow the cameras of E! to follow him, his family, friends and guests around Northwest Indiana, a la the Osbournes and Anna Nicole Smith. After E! announced plans for the show, which began in March, it brought Essany out to the coast for appearances at the TV Critics Tour and several talk shows, where he killed.

Now, I'm of the opinion that everything a student needs to know about the business of prime-time television can be learned from Sidney Lumet and Paddy Chayefsky's 1976 dark comedy, Network. Talk about prescient -¦ it practically provides a blueprint for the broadcast networks' decline into mediocrity, cynicism and irrelevancy over the past 10 or 15 years. Bill O'Reilly and Jerry Springer are only one small breakdown away from going Howard Beale on America, and "Sybill the Soothsayer" undoubtedly would have her own psychic-friends infomercial.

The on-air assassination of Beale may have seemed a bit far-fetched in 1976, but that's only because no one had thought of Fear Factor, yet

What network today wouldn't pay a billion dollars to be the first to broadcast video footage of the bullet-ridden body of Saddam Hussein or incineration of Osama Bin Laden? The winner could retrieve its investment by convincing the Pentagon to allow the triumphant soldiers to wear the logos of network advertisers on their helmets, vehicles and weapons. Geraldo Rivera probably would pony up a half-billion himself, if he were allowed to pump a round into the corpse on air.

That's a long, roundabout way of suggesting that it will be interesting to watch young Essany's progress over the next few years. He's already more polished than most of the daytime hosts with whom he would have to compete, and the camera seems to agree with him. Someone's going to give him a shot - it might as well be sooner than later.

I say, give him the 2004 Emmys. With the passing of Milton Berle, no one deserves to wear the crown of Mr. Television more than Essany, who may be the least cynical entertainer currently on the air. If that works, the Oscars would be wise to consider including him in the Crystal/Goldberg/Martin rotation. He couldn't do worse in the ratings than the current hosts of either show, and, by then, he'll be a force in Hollywood - red sport coat and all.

Pupkin lives!