For today's exercise, we're going to listen to two different radio
interviews. One is between Dan Patrick, once a popular anchor on
ESPN's popular SportsCenter news
show
and
now
host
of
his
own
radio program, with Kobe Bryant, star swingman for the Los
Angeles Lakers (date October 25th, 2010 in the show's third
hour). The second is an interview between Ira Glass, host of the
Nation Public Radio show This
American Life, with Erin McKean, a
lexicographer. They are discussing
the increasing use of the word "frenemies" on a
show
by
the
same
title.
Description:
For this exercise, you're going to need to download a file with the
interviewers' questions already transcribed. As you listen to the
interviews, you're going to decide whether the question is pre-scripted
or riffed/made up on the fly. As you do so, think about how you
could collect the questions under specific categories. At the end
of the exercise, you'll want to finish writing down the categories for
each interview that you determined, and assign a category for each
question in your spreadsheets.
Below you will find mp3 files of the two interviews and one spreadsheet
for each interview ready for your analysis.
Once you're done, think about what your answers say about each show,
and how you might discuss answers to the following and other
questions.
Which is live and which is edited?
What sorts of ethos or atmospheres do each create?
How is each formal and informal?
What advantages are there to live over edited radio
interviews?