Ryan Seacrest Built Radio Studios Where Kids Are the Hosts

Ryan Seacrest has hosted American Idol, New Year's Rockin' Eve and Wheel of Fortune. Inside 14 children's hospitals across the country, though, the microphone belongs to somebody else: the kids staying there.

The Intern Who Got His Shot

Seacrest grew up in the Atlanta suburbs and landed an internship at the radio station WSTR, known as Star 94, while he was still at Dunwoody High School.

Host Tom Sullivan gave the teenager that first job, and before Seacrest had finished high school he was filling in on the air. When Sullivan turned up at the opening of the new Atlanta studio in 2024, he remembered that Star 94 used to run radiothons for the children's hospital. "It's all come full circle," he said.

A Studio in His Hometown

In 2009, Seacrest and his family started the Ryan Seacrest Foundation. A year later, in 2010, its first studio opened inside Children's Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston, in the city where his own career began.

The foundation calls them Seacrest Studios: small radio and TV stations built into pediatric hospitals so patients can explore radio, television and new media.

The Kids Run the Show

The foundation says patients host their own shows, play games and interview the celebrities it helps bring in. Kids who are not in the studio can take part from their rooms, watching on the hospital's closed-circuit TV channel.

At Children's Hospital Colorado, kids come down to play guest DJ on the microphone and learn how the equipment works. Those who can't make it down watch on channel 45, call in to play bingo every Wednesday and Jeopardy every Friday, and phone in song requests and shout-outs.

The guest list is long. Justin Bieber, Chris Pratt, Selena Gomez, Katy Perry, Luke Bryan and Tom Holland, in full Spider-Man costume, have all come by the Atlanta studio.

An Interview With Addison Rae

In May 2023, the Orange County studio celebrated its 10th anniversary. Seacrest came in with his KIIS FM co-hosts Sisanie Villaclara and Tanya Rad, and brought Addison Rae along.

He interviewed her about performing, her upcoming films and the directors she wanted to work with. Four kids from the hospital were part of the interview too, and Seacrest asked each of them about their own passions, from music to cosmetology. Two of them, Sara and Lucy, were dreaming up a band together called The Drums and Dragons.

The audience got the mic too. One patient, Valeria, asked Rae how she deals with hate comments, and Rae told the room to believe in themselves and remember their self-worth.

Walking on Clouds

In the fall of 2024, the Atlanta studio moved into the new Arthur M. Blank Hospital. The new space is three stories tall, with a curved 17-foot-wide LED screen, several green screens and auto-tracked cameras.

It also has a green screen on the floor, so kids on camera can walk on rainbows, clouds or water.

Still on the Air

As of September 2026, Seacrest Studios are open in 14 cities: Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Dallas, Denver, Nashville, Miami, Memphis, Orange County, Orlando, Queens, Salt Lake City and Washington, D.C. In 2025 alone, the foundation says, patients made 265 original shows.

Two more are on the way. A studio at Manning Family Children's in New Orleans, the first in the Gulf South, is due in early 2027, and a 1,250-square-foot studio at Children's Wisconsin in Milwaukee, which the foundation counts as its 16th, is set for the summer of 2028.

The teenager Tom Sullivan once gave a job at Star 94 now makes sure other kids get their turn at the microphone.