past-tenseperfect-aspectprogressive-aspect
Steve Irwin was the host of various nature shows on TV before he was killed in an accident.
Steve had hosted nature shows for a long time before he had his accident.
What's the difference between that sentence and
Steve had been hosting nature shows for a long time before he had his accident.
Which is more correct?
This is a tricky question. The native ear will immediately recognize that "had been remained" is not correct. The had should be followed by a past participle. Remained and been are both past participles; you can use one or the other, but not both.
So, either of these could be used to start the sentence:
This issue gets tricky, however, when you switch to the passive voice. In that case, you can use he had been followed by a past participle, as in:
That's a valid formation, and it's listed as the past perfect passive verb form in this table1:
So, the question becomes, why can the verb elected be used in this way, but not the verb remained?
The key is that the sentence with elected is using the passive construction, but the sentence with remained has an active construction. As Dave Sperling says on his ESL website:
Because subjects of passive verbs receive the action, verbs that cannot have objects (intransitive verbs) do not have passive forms.
If you look up the words in a dictionary, you'll see that elect is transitive, and remain is intransitive, which is why had been remained sounds so awkward to the native ear, while had been elected sounds just fine – although many native speakers might have a hard time explaining why.
Now, you can explain it for them: "It's because remained is an intransitive verb, so it cannot be used in the passive voice."
Say they waited from 10:00 to 11:00 am. It is now 1:00. If you were saying they were angry at 11:00 while still waiting you could use either form but the second is better because it is more clear. If you were saying they were angry at noon--after the waiting but still in the past--then you would use the first form.
Best Answer
They are nearly equivalent.
The second form brings focus to the duration or interval of hosting rather than just the sequence of events. In this case, the "before" suggests that the interval has completed, and should probably be replaced with "when" to allow the accident to be still within the period of hosting.