Aren’t TV Interviews SO worth your time?

Man. I’m watching CNBC’s “The Big Idea” with Donny Deutsch for the first time tonight, and turn up the volume as I see he’s interviewing Robert Redford via satellite from Park City, Utah as the Sundance Film Festival ramps up this week.Donny reviews Redford’s success and I tune in particularly when I see a great clip from “All The President’s Men.” I love that film. Donny follows the clip with a question quite similar to this:”Robert, do you think that the filmmakers passing through your festival these days understand the importance of the that film, understand the significance to the Watergate scandal. do they understand the role of film in telling the stories of our time?”Redford collects his thoughts and says something to the effect of:”Good question. Technology is changing so fast–it’s moving at the speed of a freight train through our culture, and I don’t know how much time you want to spend on discussing the relevance of even THIS on our culture–“CUT to Donny INTERRUPTING:”Robert, before we’re out of time, any thoughts or comments about Johnny Carson?”That’s when I quit listening. You may need to read the exchange again, but simply, what happened is they took the interview at length, (along with the OTHER interviews they deemed worthwhile) and pared it down to the significant core of the conversation. But the producer seemingly didn’t know what he was doing when he signed off on the editing that cut Redford off at a natural pause, but a HIGHLY unnatural point in his reply. Redford was ABOUT to expound and pontificate (and in my opinion 67 year old masters of the craft like R-Squared get that privilege). And if you opt NOT to let them, DO NOT cut them off in the middle of the setup to their thought. Read it again. Redford didn’t say ANYTHING worth keeping in his reply. But I’d bet he said SOMETHING worth listening to and it was cut for time’s sake.That’s the first time I’ve been sitting here, ready to RANT when I saw this pet peeve of mine poked. I HATE how the network personalities conduct interviews as A.D.D. digestible fare. Lauer and Couric are the WORST. Can’t producers friggin’ cut out the redundant text these “anchors” read on the teleprompters during the news pieces to spare more time for interviews? Can’t they ditch the umpteenth snippet from the Amber Frey testimony to give more time to the guy who shot himself in the head with a nailgun? Actually, I couldn’t watch that story. Gave me the willies.Ultimately, when Jamie Oliver’s cooking up something like Gnocchi with Pesto, I want him to SCHOOL the talent instead of them driving the cooking lesson. It’s just that these news shows are so fragmented that we’re getting NUTTIN’ but splinters of stories. I mean, a bite of something’s okay as long as there’s substance later. I don’t know. I obviously get pissed at the media for telling us what’s important and what’s not, then passing the buck to the public blaming them for the quality and the quantity of the content they deliver. I mean, man…I feel like I can’t even sit still long enough to read a novel anymore and I KNOW that my capacity’s being changed by these other trends.Long live Charles Osgood, Garrison Keilor, NPR everywhere, and the BBC (I think…maybe I’d get used to their accents and realize they’re off their heads as much as the yanks.)