Talk Shows: the Wasted Format

[Guest fountainhall]

There’s a blog article in today’s London Telegraph about the inevitable return to UK talk show trivia now that the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations are over. Once an admired programme genre, it claims – rightly, from what little I have seen in the last few decades – “the contemporary British talk show has reached its garish, prosaic, nadir.” The emphasis is always that the presenter is “larger than the subject” and that “talk” consists merely of the interviewee flogging a book/album/show/message.

 

Rarely is anything of quality revealed as information . . . it makes for a short-sighted waste of form that has and can offer compelling television as vivid spectacle, wisdom, excitement, hilarity and education.

 

It then looks back longingly to an iconic BBC TV series from the early 1960s. “Face to Face” in which the interviewer would be largely off-camera (then the broadcaster John Freeman) and the camera would zero in to an extreme close-up of the face of the person being interviewed. It was its own special kind of drama.

 

A rule was observed by all that would strike abject terror into the modern PR or brand manager; subjects were refused advanced access to the questions, everything was in play and in return the subject could drink or smoke in the key interest of that social lubricant that often taps the richest of our communications: relaxation.

 

Many being interviewed were clearly ‘thrown’ by some questions – often personal. A famous one was with the most successful British comedian of the day, Tony Hancock (you can see it on You Tube). The discussion about the parallels between comedy and tragedy were fascinating. Hancock was clearly uncomfortable in parts of the interview. Soon, due to his own insecurities, his career went downhill and he eventually committed suicide at the age of 44.

 

http://blogs.indepen...host-an-appeal/

 

Another was the British television personality Gilbert Harding who hosted the UK version of “What’s My Line”. An irascible unmarried man who was often characterized as “the rudest man in Britain”, Harding’s “Face to Face” interview also reveals a sad man ridden with all sorts of guilt. Freeman admitted after the taping that he had pressed Harding too much on his closeness to his mother – perhaps with the intention of bringing him to talk obliquely about his homosexuality, a subject that was virtually taboo given the laws in England that that time. Harding died a few weeks after the programme was broadcast at age 53.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gYlLV2aSb4

 

I guess the nearest television has to this type of programme nowadays is Charlie Rose, some of whose interviews are penetrating and insightful as well as entertaining.

[Rogie]

There seem to have been a lot of unhappy people back in the 50's and 60's. I wonder if one reason for that is society was by today's standards very strait-laced - maybe not so bad if your own life happily conformed, but not so good if you were an outsider or a bit of a rebel - eventually that had to give sooner or later, witness James Dean, Brando, Bill Haley, angry young men in the theatre etc. That would have been fine if you were young then but for those already in middle age it was too late to reinvent yourself. All the disappointments and set backs (some of their own making no doubt but it must have been very frustrating conforming to society's conservative 'norms') of their younger selves a constant bitter pill.

 

The BBC has come in for a lot of criticism over the poor quality of their coverage of the Queen's Jubilee celebrations. It was deemed very lightweight and lacking an in depth background knowledge, such as the veteran presenter David Dimbleby might have brought. The 'UK talk show trivia' as you call it FH reflects a dumbing down of the whole corporation from management downwards. Gone are the days when the BBC could fritter money away, now the amount they receive via the TV-licence fees is capped so they have to be more careful. On the one hand the number of quality programmes the BBC makes or commissions has diminished, when at the same time the salaries they pay to their top presenters has skyrocketed. The cult of personality at the BBC is alive and well at the expense, some would say, of diminishing the BBC's effectiveness as a producer of good quality television. Many would say the BBC no longer has much prestige.

[Guest fountainhall]

The BBC has come in for a lot of criticism over the poor quality of their coverage of the Queen's Jubilee celebrations

 

I went as far as to write to the Corporation to complain primarily about the extremely poor sound quality of the 'live' concert on Tuesday evening. The line up of stars was amazing - Paul McCartney, Elton John, Tom Jones, Stevie Wonder and dozens more - but the sound was at times pitiful with dreadful balance between singers and their backing bands. When you think of the number of pop concerts that take place in 60,000+ arenas and are recorded 'live' for TV and/or DVD with first-class sound, there is clearly a plethora of top-notch sound balance engineers around the world. Yet, an organisation like the BBC which has hundreds of trained sound engineers on its staff, ends up producing worse than third-rate quality!

[Rogie]

I went as far as to write to the Corporation to complain primarily about the extremely poor sound quality of the 'live' concert on Tuesday evening.

 

That's interesting. I just watched to see the performers theatricals rather than enjoy the music as i have bad hearing so couldn't distinguish between Pavarotti and Leonard Cohen (slight exaggeration perhaps! ). Is there any chance the sound deteriorated in quality somewhere en route to Thai TV?

 

Back to the Talk Show format. I wonder if back in the 50's and early 60's many interviewees made for easy pickings. Their lives were much more private and the general public weren't used to knowing details of well-known peoples' private lives so didn't ask too many questions. So to have the 'celebrity' on TV being asked personal questions must have been quite a shock, both for interviewee and viewer. Nowadays when a celeb is interviewed it's often more a case of just larkin' about, name dropping and, as said in the OP, plugging their latest song, book, concert, etc. Many people watching already know virtually everything one would want to know about the person - he or she may have been featured in Hello magazine or one of its clones and been the subject of endless gossip in any of countless newspapers and latter-day penny dreadfuls.

[Guest fountainhall]

Is there any chance the sound deteriorated in quality somewhere en route to Thai TV?

 

I watched it twice on the BBC Knowledge satellite channel. Any deterioration in the signal would have been extremely minimal, and it would not have affected the balance between the singers and backing bands.

 

So to have the 'celebrity' on TV being asked personal questions must have been quite a shock, both for interviewee and viewer

 

I agree. The problem today, I think, is that so many stars and personalities are represented by agents, managers and PR companies. They therefore only put out the agreed 'message'. I suspect also that the interviewer is granted the interview only on condition that anything that might be contentious is a no-go area. If the interviewer then goes anywhere near that no-go area, he/she knows it will be a long time before he gets another interview from anyone also managed by the agency etc. Hence the blandness!

[kokopelli]

witness James Dean, Brando, Bill Haley, angry young men in the theatre etc.

 

Bill Haley? Is he the same as William Haley, the blond boy with the yellow shirt and white cap that appears in the Flirt for Free ad at the top of this page? Got to say, he sure has a big xxxk.

[Rogie]

Got to say, he sure has a big xxxk.

 

Yeah, let me try and guess what was on your mind Koko - he sure has a big comet, right? Whoever would have guessed the phallic undertones to Bill Haley's Comets . . .

 

Boring scientific point of order: The comet speeding through the heavens is spelled Halley, the paunchy rock 'n roller with the quiff Haley.

[kokopelli]

Yeah, let me try and guess what was on your mind Koko - he sure has a big comet, right? Whoever would have guessed the phallic undertones to Bill Haley's Comets . . .

 

This is the William Haley I was referring to; he is on the Flirt for Free banner on GayThailand. Of course I never check out these sites so I really don't know just how big his comet is.