Click Boy

Right now, American Idol is winding its way through its various qualifying rounds, as it is every year. And once again, Ryan Seacrest will be at the helm, as he is at the helm of an increasing amount of everything ever. This job, American Idol, is what he will certainly go down in pop-culture history for doing.

But it's not what I'll remember him for.

While American Idol is where Seacrest made it big, it's not his first TV hosting gig. When I was growing up, I saw him in that pre-Idol gig. And that gig left a big impression on me, such that when he was announced as one of the two people that would host Idol's first season (hi, Brian Dunkleman! Have you lived that genius decision down yet?), my first thought was 'hey, it's that guy!'

Why did the show leave such an impression? Because the kids were idiots.

The show was called Click, and it ran from 1997 to 1999, with reruns on Game Show Network. So it was a couple years prior to Idol, which began in 2002. Back then, the Internet was still fairly new to everyone, so someone thought it made sense to theme a game show about it.

To this day, I refer to Seacrest as "Click Boy".

Let's set the Internet Wayback Machine to 1997 for a sample episode, and if someone could maybe hack into the Fox feed during a live show and run this stuff, that would be awesome and I disavow all knowledge of your actions.

(Preview question: If you won the Indy 500, what kind of flag would be waved?)

(Preview answer: "American?")