SEACREST HOPES TO KISS AGUILERA ON TV

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Pucker up, Christina Aguilera. Ryan Seacrest hopes to plant a New Year’s kiss on you. Aguilera will be performing on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve 2007,” hosted by Clark and Seacrest from Times Square in New York on Sunday night. Other performers on the three-and-a-half hour ABC broadcast include Rascal Flatts and the stars of Broadway’s “Jersey Boys.”

“Last year I got lucky with Mariah (Carey), so hopefully at that moment she’s right there,” Seacrest, 32, said of the 26-year-old pop singer, AP Radio News reported Friday.

Clark, 77, missed the show two years ago when he suffered a stroke, but returned to the holiday staple last New Year’s Eve. Seacrest took over much of the broadcast for Clark, who has reported on the madness in Times Square for viewers nearly every year since 1972.

Last year’s “Rockin’ Eve” was Clark’s first national TV appearance since his stroke. Seacrest said the former “American Bandstand” host is “obviously still recovering but I think you’ll see improvement on the New Year’s Eve show.”

The show is a tradition of sorts for Seacrest.

“When I was a kid, we would have a baby sitter and we’d have a pizza, you know, apple cider in a champagne flute, and we’d actually watch Dick Clark on television in Atlanta,” recalled the host of Fox’s “American Idol.”

So will cranky “Idol” judge Simon Cowell tune in?

“He won’t even turn it on because he can’t stand to watch anything where he’s not featured,” Seacrest said.

“It’s true. So last year, he went to an island where they didn’t get American television or cable, and I would imagine he’s probably doing the same thing.”