This week's All Access newsletter hasn't been sent out yet, and I don't know why, but, lucky you, you get it first right here, some blather about grilling candidates or something like that:
There was a lot of discussion on the radio and the Net about that presidential candidates' debate the other day, the "YouTube debate." It was heralded as revolutionary -- regular people, people like you and me, asking the kind of questions the regular reporters won't dare ask. It was a case of the people being able to go directly to the newsmakers, interacting with them like never before.
Except for the last several decades of talk radio, that is.
Yes, you've been at the leading edge of a media revolution and didn't even know it. Talk shows have allowed newsmakers and callers to interact since someone figured out how to put callers on the air. Okay, the idea of people making goofy little videos with questions for the candidates is kinda cool, but you've been able to do it even better -- direct one-on-one confrontations, follow-up questions, true interactivity -- for years, and nobody's calling you ahead of your time. No Internet, no video, no glamour.
I'll admit right here a general bias against guests and interviews. I get bored with a lot of interviews -- the polite ones are a little dull, and the shouting matches are fun but end up as pointless as pro wrestling. That being said, if a presidential candidate is available, of course you're going to want to take that opportunity. But most of the interviews I hear on talk radio with the candidates miss the mark because they're exactly that: interviews. The host asks a question, the candidate answers (sort of), the host asks another question, the candidate dodges it, and that's pretty much all you get. When you do that, you're forgetting to use your secret weapon, the most potent thing you have in your arsenal to make those interviews work for you and to get you ratings... your audience. Callers. Let THEM ask the questions. Besides making your job easier, they're quite likely to ask questions you might be too polite or nervous to ask. That was what the YouTube debate was supposed to be, a chance for the public to ask the tough questions. You can make that happen any time you want, whenever you get a candidate or public official on the air.
So that's my request for any of you who happen to be able to book a candidate on your show this campaign season. If the candidate won't take calls from listeners, just say no -- that's the sign of a candidate who's so tightly controlled and spinning that you won't get an honest answer to a real question anyway. If you can get a candidate to take calls, that's exactly what you should do, and make sure the screener knows to find the tough questions, not just the "oh, I just LOVE you and I'll be voting for you" calls. That's more entertaining, you'll learn more about the candidate from how those tough questions are handled, and, who knows? You might actually make some news that way.
And if one of your callers DOES press a candidate on an issue and the candidate DOES say something newsworthy, it might just end up as one of the many provocative topic starters you'll find at All Access News-Talk-Sports and the cleverly-named Talk Topics column that's chock full of, um, talk topics like the reason a woman got herself banned from Wal-Mart, a text-messaging bus driver, some very candid mountain rescuers, my agony over Chase Utley's broken hand, why a popular series of children's books- no, not that one, another one- is being shunned by some parents, the weird feeling when a co-worker is, as we say in Net News, "exiting," a flying car, some airport evacuations, an anesthesiologist you don't want working on you, why alcohol and parking gates don't mix, the genetics of itching, poop in the pool, Death Cat 2007, why not to feed the coyotes, why not to get pulled over by cops on the road between Tijuana and the beach, a guy a judge has ruled is too fat to adopt a child, the Attack of the Giant Squid, an all-you-can-eat sushi buffet that turned out to be not really all one guy could eat, how your friends might make you fat, dog cosmetics, Tom Cruise at the movies, and why Disney won't be making "The Jim Leyland Story" anytime soon. And you get a provocative "10 Questions With..." Air America Radio "Young Turks" co-host and Jersey guy Cenk Uygur and the rest of All Access with news and columns and message boards and music and Mediabase and the Industry Directory and you know all about that, and that it's all free, right? Okay, then.
What, then, have we learned this week? 1) Let listeners grill your guests. 2) YouTube debates are an interesting concept, but talk radio's been there and done that. 3) YouTube is okay for political material but far better for videos of people getting hit in the nuts with baseballs, or for that guy who sings "Chocolate Rain." 4) It is exasperating to be a Phillies fan. 5) I am deeply, totally exhausted. More lessons next week. Class dismissed.
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