Right now I’m listening to Diana Naiad on the NPR show To The Point, where she has been subbing for Warren Olney for quite some time. In fact, I’m not quite sure Olney’s coming back, as it seems like he’s been gone for quite a while.
At any rate, Diana Naiad, a former Olympic* swimmer who used to do just sports stories, has been branching out into harder news and features, and whenever I listen to her, it seems as if I’m listening to a high school student deliver an oral report. She lays out the questions for guests in a painfully obvious way, and similarly lays out the topics for the day’s show.
Just wondering if anyone else has felt the same.
*Not sure about the Olympic bit, but she is a swimmer. I seem to remember her swimming to Catalina or something like that.
Arrgh, she just did it again! “I hear oil prices have doubled in the last year. Is that right?” Why would she even have to waste airtime saying that…maybe this should have gone into the Pit.
I used to listen to her on * The Savvy Traveller*, and my only objection to her was that she wasn’t Rudy Maxa, who was the host before Diana Naiad. (I liked listening to Rudy Maxa’s deeper voice better, plus there is a component of once you get used to one thing, it can be hard to adjust to change). Diana Naiad may have sounded a little fluffy there, but it was mostly appropriate for the show.
I’m not familiar with To The Point, and so will refrain from making any judgement on her apparent qualifications.
Having said that, I hate her with the white hot passion of a thousand suns. She’s a terrible radio personality who ruined The Savvy Traveler show when she took it over from Rudy Maxa. Her sports reporting is no great shakes and I shudder to think that now she’s trying to branch out into hard news. To me, she injects her opinions into her show too much.
spelling her name correctly allowed me to use Google to confirm that Diana Nyad didn’t swim in the Olympics, but swam much longer distances in an attempt to win fame and fortune.The History of Diana Nyad