It’s got to be Murphy’s Law. My
mum’s been relatively quiet all nice, tiptoeing around the house and making
about as much impact as a chair. But then imagine this, in slow motion: I
slowly put my earphones in and press ‘play’ to listen to the lecture podcast, she
slowly turns to me, and initiates what seems to be the most intense and demanding
conversation in the history of not just mankind, but life on Earth itself.
Switch to fast motion: I pause over and over to wait for more chatter, the
flicking of paper, the hiss of a boiling kettle, the sizzling of a salad that
just happens to need preparing tonight and in this 30-minute time frame, and
more chatter about whatever’s in the paper and how the coffee and salad is
ready.
A few stern taps on my earphones and
she gets the picture and sulks away, head lowered in a mock fit of despair.
So eventually I began to learn
about telling stories for radio. Radio is a completely different medium to
television, and much more intimate, much like the conversation of my mother. TV,
although high-impact, can be watched from a distance. For example, while making
instant soup in the kitchen, I enjoy leaning slightly backward to watch infomercials
in the dining room. Conversely, radio can be listened to while multitasking,
and the radio voice often comes from “inside your head”. Conveniently creepy.
While a conventional radio
interview is 7 minutes tops, conversational radio can easily be an hour long with
a single guest. Seems somewhat like a typical conversation with my grandma (mind
you, the same topics are repeated a few times because she forgets we’ve already
discussed them so it probably wouldn’t be a solid hour of content).
Conversation involves ideas as well as biographical content – like conversations with my grandma – and it’s important you’re that genuinely interested – not like conversations with my grandma.
Teasing your guests a little can
be fun and harmless –
No point doing this…
you’re on radio, no one can see.
- as it gets them to be like a normal human
being, and you might get some unintended information from them.
I found it interesting that a key skill in interviewing people for radio is to respect rare moments of their own personal thoughts by shutting up. Apparently this gives them the prompt to pause and reflect, although personally I’d be wondering why the funny radio man went quiet.
In radio, annunciation DOES
matter as you are trying to communicate – well, that rules me out, as a speaker
of four thousand words a minute. Radio is the ‘theatre of the mind’, minus red
velvet curtains and those happy/sad masks that freak me out.
GET AWAY FROM ME
DEMONS
While posing questions for
talkback, you can be blunt, but not James Blunt, as no one would listen.
Radio has continued to keep and
increase its audience worldwide due to the rising phenomenon of everyone being
time poor, so maybe it’s a more hopeful outlet than print journalism which as I
previously wrote about has one foot in the grave. But my jokes are too corny
for radio and I speak like a total bogan, so I’ll just have to pray the mighty
pen stays mighty.