Sometimes while listening to the latest popular music station (KISS FM in Los Angeles), the host will bring in some celebrity and conduct a short interview. To me, these kinds of interviews, especially ones with the bigger stars, always sound soooo fake. I wonder if radio stations routinely fake these kind of things for their listeners?
Usually the clue that it may be fake comes from the delivery. People stammer and pause, even celebrities doing impromptu interviews, but these ones always seem to flow perfectly. The host knows exactly when to start the next question (like a nanosecond after the celebrity finishes answering) and whatever question he asks, the celebrity instantly has an answer.
Also, the celebrity never NEVER calls the host by name. No “Hi XXXXX, how’s it going?” Always a generic hello and then straight on to the interview.
Another thing: no small talk. You’d think that the host would engage in some bit of small talk, asking about relationships, teasing the celeb about who they’re dating and stuff like that. Nothing.
Unlike other call-in radio interviews or phone calls from listeners, the audio is always perfect and there is never a delay (“So-and-so is late calling us, listen to this song while we try to get her”).
These things always seem to come out of the FM dial, not talk shows from the AM stations. Its always some pop music station. So I’m just wondering, is this kind of thing done?
The big celebrity is giving multiple interviews over and over by phone, and the radio people were given scripted questions to ask. This may be recorded rather than live, and editing may have occurred between the taping and airing.
or
It is fake. The same thing as above, only the celebrity’s part is prerecorded and the questions are edited in. The only one’s I’ve heard like this were ads for a Vegas timeshare called Tahiti Village.
Our local pop music station does them all the time. They are either timed for a show or book deal or the celebrity in question is shilling for some business. Very irritating.
Based on the replies above, I guess I can understand why. Pop music on the FM dial seems to be more in line with what’s current and trendy. KISS FM specifically seems to always have whatever celebrity that’s deemed “hot” on their interviews, whereas AM is more slow-paced, serious, and presumably wouldn’t mind doing a real interview with a real person that pauses and stammers. And you also wouldn’t expect some oldie rock station to want to or need to fake interviews with aging rock stars to please their listeners: some of them probably would relish a station giving them an interview years past their prime
Unless that was a Whoosh! on my part, then its significant cause a wizard did it
Back when I used to haunt vinyl record stores I came across a record of George Harrison giving a fake interview with pauses so that each radio station DJ could insert his/her canned questions. This was a long time ago, and it certainly happened then. No reason it couldn’t happen now.
And it happened even before then. In 1962 or so I had an album by the DJ and pseudo-monster person Zachary, which had the canned interview on the back cover. I heard exactly that interview on an AM radio station. It’s a win-win - cheap publicity for the artist, and it makes the two-bit radio station seem big enough to merit individual attention from the big star.
My station did it back in, oh, 1975 or so. When we couldn’t arrange a suitable time for a telephone interview with a recording artist, we’d send a list of questions. The artist would record the answers and send them back to us.
In a situation like that, I wouldn’t call it a “phony” interview, since the artist was specifically answering questions we had asked, and we mentioned on the air that the responses were recorded.
And if the celeb doesn’t mention the DJ’s name, the same interview can be reprocessed again another time. It’s obvious that’s what some “archival” stations do, as many of the celebs’ they broadcast have been dead for 20 years.
Good grief. Generalize much? “Everyone” is a whole lotta territory, sweetcakes. If people were not still listening to radio, then radio would not still exist.
I drive a 1997 econo-car that has that state-of-the art audio component called a radio. It also plays cassette tapes. I do not care to spend the money it would take to upgrade, or to install something I could plug my iPod *Shuffle *into. I have a cell phone I use for making phone calls (and very occasionally receiving phone calls) only. I do not pay the extra it costs to use the internet. Even if I did, I wouldn’t have it on in my car. I use Pandora at work, occasionally.
I know about all the cool groovy ways that people can consume music and other media now. I just choose not to spend money on them.
Yes, they were available but I never used 'em because they sounded fake.
However, just a few years ago I did a “perfect” telephone interview with Michelle Phillips (Manas & Papas). She was promoting something on PBS and I was going to air it w-a-y before she woke up, so we recorded it the day before and it got edited down to about 8 minutes. The interview was real, but doctored. It never occurred to me at the time that that could cause it to sound fake.
Mel Gibson had an “interview” CD with himself and James Caviezel when Passion of the Christ came out. It was pretty funny to listen to, and we had no intention of airing it as a serious interview, so one of the DJs had some fun at Gibson’s expense.
That said, I’ve edited original interviews. Some hemming and hawing sounds natural, but when you’re talking to someone whose grasp of the English language is shaky at best, the hemming and hawing becomes distracting and impossible to understand, so a little editing makes the speaker sound more natural and less like an idiot. In fact, I had to have the interviewer re-record his questions to sound more polished and less like someone who hadn’t bothered to prepare and was lousy at ad-libbing. For the most part, though, celebrity interviews are more PR and less about serious, ethical journalism. The morning DJ isn’t Terry Gross, and no one expects them to be.
Yes, here in the Boston area we periodically have some minor-minor celebrity ( a long ago ‘Bond Girl’, I think) schilling for a vacation resort - I think its in either Florida or Las Vegas.
