The masked magician is back

Nash Entertainment is resurrecting the Masked Magician, the star of Nash's five Breaking the Magician's Code: Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed specials, which scored big ratings for Fox in the late 1990s.

The specials caused a fuss with somel magicians, who were upset that some of the industries best tricks and illusions were being dissected on primetime TV. In the fourth special, the magician removed his mask; turns out it was Val Valentino, a figure well-known on the illusion circuit.

More experienced professional magicians however realised that TV exposure amounts to nothing. If you are a competent performer then your audience will have enjoyed the experience so much that they really would not want to know how it was done. Also, the method and the trick are so "buried" in the overall entertainment that the audience would not generally know if they had seen the method exposed an hour ago - let alone a day or a week.

Exposure is not great for magic. It reinforces the idea that magic is a puzzle to be worked out. However unless you are a rather new magician or an incompetent club hobbyist, both of whom have an irritating habit of demonstrating tricks rather than performing magic, exposure is not likely to be a big issue for you. In fact the incompetent club hobbyist will always do more damage to magic through rubbish performances than the odd exposure show will ever do.