Human Interests and the Radio Reporter

Radio Record, 13 May 1938, Page 6

Human Interests and the Radio Reporter

HOSE who listen te radio interviews and these who srrange them should find considerable interest in this article by E.R.B. who claims that listeners want personality rather than philosophy from the "greet ones."

66 OOD evening, Mr. Puffin." "Good evening." "You are an enginedriver ?"’ "That’s so."’ "What is it like being an enoine-driver ? "

"Oh, so-so; depends how you look on it." And so on. And they call it a radio interview ! Interviewing isanart. And radio interviewing is doubly an art. Any experienced newspaper man will tell you his ‘‘chief’’ prizes a good interviewer beyond, rubies. What everybody wants to hear, is the details of the inner life of somebody elseand it takes a good man to get to them. It must be admitted, however, that the newspaper interviewer has an advantage over his wireless cousin, for he can sit back over his typewriter and frame his sentences with care, more or less at leisure. The radio man must have his wits very much in the "present tense,’’ with no happy background of reflection. Still, that is no excuse for the kind of radio interview heard over the air so often lately. A successful interviewer is not concerned so much with bringing out a celebrity’s attitude towards some question of the moment, as with bringing out the great one’s personality itself. Granted that the interviewee may be reporter-shy,

microphone-shy and camerashy, but the interviewer’s job is, at all costs, to set him at ease and to induce him to talk naturally in the clubchair or fire-side manner. It is, as I say, the personal touch that is open to enter-

taining exploitation. And here thorough preparation plays a big part. | What's the use of dragging a man into a studio, firing questions and expecting up-to-the-minute, snappy answers ? It can’t be done. ; Again, when the "‘intimate’’ type of interview is sought, say over a dinner-table in a hotel, it is fatal simply to barge in with a list of questions that the second party has not had time to study. Time, of course, is the essence of the contract in radio work, but a word to the wise: Once the interviewee is launched on a subject, you may be sure it is interesting to listeners. If, by ill luck he becomes "‘un-broadcastable," the remedy lies in the switch-off. The greatest virtue an interviewer can passess is tact. He must remember that he is a nonentity compared-with the interviewee, although he may have his public and his fan mail. Most of the New Zealand radio stations have tried their hand at relayed interviews, from the man who works in a sewer to the exalted gentleman who sits on the judges’ box at a high-class race meeting; from the visiting prima donna to the secretary of the mouth-organ band, and from the traffic cop to the lady who recently toured New Zealand with the signatures of all the mayors in the world inscribed (Continued on next page.)

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on the body work of her ear, But in no case has an interviewer utrempted the really personal touch. It is "human interest" that gets the public. Listeners want to know what the man Vror woman) eats, drinks, the type of house he lives in, what he does with his spare time, the books he reads, and the music that he enjoys. Women, especially, love this kind of thing. And Wwolnend make up a great bulk of the listening public. Speaking from experience. I would suy to the would-he radio reporter in New Zeatund: Get you man to confess thut he has low-brow tastes and your Pul-mail will inereuse ten-fold. Wheu interviewing the "greut.’ however cynically you may view the job, ask him to own up to his weak points. That kind of thing dues not dorp a man from his pedestal to the floor; it makes him human.