There is a presenter gap, and U.S. is on wrong side of it

So we’ve seen Dr. Lucy Worsley talk about the Regency, Andrew Marr tell us of the making of modern Britain, Michael Wood relate the story of England and even Dr. Ian Stewart tell us how continents formed and Dr. Brian Cox inform us of the wonders of the universe.

And what do all these documentaries I just mentioned have in common: presenters, that curious, now almost exclusively British breed of polymath intellectuals who can tell a good story.

It’s almost as if there’s some secret organization that breeds presenters; as if there were a British version of the Manhattan project that resolved: Yes, we may have lost an empire, but we can still breed quirky, entertaining, whip smart presenters who can explain how we lost that empire.

Of course that secret organization is merely the aggregated efforts of Eton, Oxford, Cambridge, the BBC and the fact the island nation is so thick with history you can’t turn a spade over anywhere without uncovering a bronze age settlement, or at the very least a Roman coin.

Of course, the U.S. used to have one presenter who could hold his own against the British: Dr. Carl Sagan. In his turtle neck and camel-colored suit jacket he had license to expound on practically any subject, although the cosmos was his forte. He was erudite but enthusiastic, brilliant and yet understandable, and he is almost singular.

For some reasons, we don’t celebrate the presenter. Most American history, nature and science documentaries prefer off-screen narrators with voices recognizable from the world of entertainment. Sigourney Weaver narrated the American version of the BBC’s Planet Earth, replacing the éminence grise of British presenters, Sir David Attenborough (although Attenborough is not seen on screen). Most American documentaries involve an off-camera and rarely heard interviewer asking questions of an on-camera expert, usually photographed off center and rarely looking at the camera.

Compare this to an Adam Hart-Davis documentary, where the presenter is often seen wearing period clothing and mugging for the camera. Or Tony Robinson dressed as a fish-wife stamping his feet in a bucket of urine.

There are many almost presenters in America. Dr. Brian Greene almost is a match for the UK’s Dr. Brian Cox. Dr. Michio Kaku is practically a presenter and is certainly ubiquitous. Alan Alda has certainly built up his credentials on Scientific American Frontiers. And we can almost forget that Morgan Freeman really has no credentials for talking about wormholes. But American presenters lack something that prevents them from becoming presenters, and I’m not just talking about a British accent.

What they lack is exposure. You can expect to see Amanda Vickery talking about the lives of Georgian women on prime time in the UK, either on the BBC, Channel 4 or ITV. When’s the last time you saw an American presenter talk about the American Revolution on prime time television on NBC, CBS, ABC or FOX? And if you saw a presenter on PBS prime time, it was probably a British presenter.

You might argue that we have other sources of documentaries, such as the Discovery Channel, the History Channel and … OK, by now you’re laughing because you know these channels are increasingly overrun by reality television shows like Swamp People and Hillbilly Handfishin’ and Pawn Stars. And with a single exception, these shows don’t have presenters: a recognizable intelligent, authoritative figure who you think could host almost any program.

(That exception is Mike Rowe from Dirty Jobs who can speak without a script, intelligently, has a good voice, a willingness to look silly while still maintaining his dignity, and is ubiquitous. He’s done narration for many other Discovery Channel shows. But I still don’t think I could buy Mike as a presenter for a documentary about Teddy Roosevelt, even though I admit his voice makes me swoon.)

Unfortunately, reality television is here to stay and like a pernicious weed will continue to suck air time away from documentaries. Even the Science Channel, which was one of the few channels free from reality television, now includes Oddities, Punkin’ Chunkin’ and Mantracker.

I could urge intelligent people to forgo watching reality television, but I understand we all have our favorite guilty pleasures. I watched Mythbusters regularly until it became glaringly obvious that they had run out of myths and I watched Dirty Jobs until it became increasingly self-referential with too many clip shows.

Instead I am proposing that we subvert reality television and use it solve the presenter gap: America’s Next Top Presenter. We get Alan Alda, Brian Greene and Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson as the panel judges who will anoint some bright young thing to be our next polymath, auto-didact, raconteur. Bravo, Saturday nights at eight.