Does Bob Wood-ward have spas-mo-dic dys-pho-nia? Some-times he talks like a wind-up ro-bot who needs wind-ing up a-gain.
This is entirely untrue. NPR programs have a strict schedule of breaks, two per hour, at :19 and :39. This is for affiliates to air underwriting messages and run a promo. There is no deviation from this format; there can’t be, or it would mess up the automation playlist of every station carrying the program, or require a board operator to sit there and wait for her to “override a guest’s opinion to go to a break” as you suggest. It just is not happening.
I don’t think that Rehm is timing the breaks in order to derail a guest or a caller’s speech, but I definitely believe she takes advantage of them. Rarely does the speaker get to complete an argument after returning from the break.
I find Rehm to be aggressively pseudo-moderate in the David Broder mold. She holds to a line of pretend impartiality that doesn’t allow the guests or the callers get to the root of their points. And, as Autumn said, when someone says something that Rehm doesn’t like, instead of probing to get to the heart of the issue, she dresses them down like a schoolmarm for being immoderate.
She’s even more rude to callers than she is to guests, often lecturing them about minutiae and minor unfortunate choices of phrasing, using her fourth grade teacher’s standard of decorum to narrow the range of the discussion.
And, the thing that irritates me the most is her frequent use of her talk show to wallow in the wonderfulness that is the life of Diane Rehm, by inviting her close friends (usually headlined as “important women in the world” or somesuch) or her freaking husband to talk about how divinely wonderful their marriage is. Makes me want to puke. Too often “The Diane Rehm Show” is a show about Diane Rehm instead of a show hosted by Diane Rehm.
If this is the case for her show, then I must have misinterpreted what I heard. Consider that portion of my statement retracted.
No problem… if you ever hear a host barge into a guest’s commentary to go to a break, it is because there are only seconds left before the automated switch.
BTW, love your name, and the song.
This is true for most shows on NPR, but not all. Terry Gross takes her breaks on Fresh Air when she damn well feels like it! And I have indeed sat at the board waiting for her to say “More after the break.” (Though it is easy for the station to get the break times in advance–it’s not like the show is live, after all.)
Actually, Mr. Smithee, there is at least one hard-timed break in Fresh Air, at the mid-point. I don’t have the NPR clocks here at home, or I could tell you what time it happens. (Her show is just finishing when I get to work, and it repeats after I get home.) The other breaks are floating, so we never bother to try to cover them. With the automation, it’d be impossible, as they are all of variable length. The exception is during fundraising. Then we get advance notice of when the floaters are, so we can break into the show smoothly.
I’m not sure how that contradicts what I wrote. I knew there was one or two hard breaks scheduled, but I couldn’t remember the details, so I didn’t mention them. Your earlier post implied that there were no floating breaks on NPR, and that Diane Rehm therefore couldn’t possibly use them to disadvantage guests. I don’t know whether The Diane Rehm show has floaters, but Fresh Air does and Terry Gross could presumably use them to cut guests off if she wanted to. (But she doesn’t.)
I wasn’t contradicting you. I don’t see, however, how you managed to read into my comments that I was saying there are no floating breaks on NPR. Terry Gross is the only one who uses them in her show, that I’m aware of. The clocks for “Diane Rehm” and “Talk Of The Nation” are the same - :19 and :39, no floaters. “Morning Edition” is full of breaks, but I’m not awake then to hear them. “All Things Considered” breaks are at :19 and :49.
That sure sounds like no floating breaks to me. But no sweat; we both agree now.