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Backstage at the State of Things
posted at 2009-03-21 12:12 | Last modified 2009-03-21 12:22
Thanks for all the kind feedback on my guest-host gig yesterday on the “State of Things.” It’s a very different experience from radio reporting, which is a pretty solitary occupation – especially in a satellite bureau like the statehouse.
As a reporter, you’re your own writer, producer, director, and engineer. But because most of your work isn’t live, you have total control over it -- you get to keep doing things over till you get them right and they sound good. And if you screw up, you generally embarrass only yourself.
A talk show, on the other hand, is live, so you’re working without a net. But the upside is that there’s a team of smart people whose job it is to make you sound good. They’re pre-interviewing guests, writing scripts, rolling music, cueing you to start talking – even shooting you follow-up questions via IM in the studio.
The hours before a show are a blur of activity. Promos are recorded. Intros are tweaked, questions re-ordered. Guests arrive and circulate through the studio for mic level checks. Musicians warm up in the green room. Phone connections are checked. A pile of final scripts shoots out of the printer and lands in the studio for last-minute notes and fixes: “Hey, how do you pronounce this?”
But when the music rolls, it all comes down to conversation versus clock. Up on the wall behind the guests, there’s a big red countdown of the minutes left in the segment. The host has to manage the conversational arc to get to the good stuff, listening carefully and following up while keeping one eye on the clock, and then wrap it all up gracefully and on time without cutting anyone off mid-sentence. Do this three times, and you’ve got a show.
This is much harder than it sounds. It’s an art form, really, and I’ve always known Frank Stasio is really good at it, but yesterday made me realize just how good. It also boosted my appreciation of the behind-the-scenes team that makes the show work, day in and day out: senior producer Susan Davis, producers Lindsay Foster Thomas and Amber Nimocks, editor Katy Barron, and engineer Robin Copley. They’re a smart, kind, and very talented crew, and we’re lucky to have them.
If you missed the show, you can find it here – look for March 20th. Meantime, I’ll be back on the beat tomorrow with the Sunday roundup.
Comments? Drop me a line.
