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Radio on the television / television on the radio

I was searching out new mp3s to listen to just now, and came across this absolutely painful interview. Luke Burbank of NPR interviewing Icelandic band Sigur Ros and it goes pretty poorly. After the first long pause, it's pretty clear the group has no interest in being interviewed for this show, which is also being filmed for YouTube (hence the video).



I thought it odd to watch an interview like this, and to see it going so poorly. It's a very raw interview, with people who has clearly not been prepared for interview. There's absolutely nothing going on here, and the host points that out at one point, and then it just goes downhill from there.

I've never been very good at live radio. For me, it's all got to be scripted. I've not been writing many radio pieces lately, and I miss the structuring of creating a script. When I write for radio, I transcribe everything I can, even the soundbites, to see if there's a way I can present the information as succinctly as possible.

In other words, I've had painful interviews before, but thankfully, never of them were live. Kudos to Luke Burbank and NPR for putting this stuff up in the raw, with video footage as well, to show a little bit about how the sausage gets made.

On another note, I've been loading my new iPod Touch up with new podcasts, to take advantage of the absolutely cool visuals on the thing. I noticed that the audio portion of 60 Minutes is available now for download. As I walked my dog tonight, I listened to a fascinating story about US policy on killing civilians in war-time. Don Hewitt has always said that 60 Minutes is about the writing, and I think I'm going to adopt the habit of listening to this podcast. (Hey - Drag to iTunes!)

Comments

Anonymous said…
That was painful. If there wasn't some hint of a language barrier, I'd almost say there was a bit of malicious intent to make that interview go poorly. I thought the host did well to keep asking questions.

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