I have to recuse myself from the critical/analytical due to my local affiliate’s having cancelled My Word to make room for this show. My Word was stuffy, obscure, forty-year old recordings of awful puns for people who knew who the Hell John Dryden was. An irrelevant demographic in which I was at home. So not only would my observations of Ask Me Another be irrelevant, but unfairly clouded.
Nahh, why waste a good kvetch? The softball questions are so soft I had to check to see if Spalding had been taken over by Pillsbury. The host is an exemplar of that self-congratulatory hipness at which young Canadians seem to excell. And the format offers the worst aspects of bar trivia nights to which it aspires: simply questions that can be answered in an instant, dragged out by musical interludes to allow the yahoos to look up the answers on Safari.
Why would NPR appeal to a younger demographic with a bar trivia show, when the target audience is probably out at a real bar trivia?
I enjoy it well enough; it’s not in the first rank of my podcasts, but it’s not bad. That said, as a Talk of the Nation fan, I do understand how you feel.
Without the musical bits, I’d be changing the station. I’d also be behind them just running** RadioLab** a second time every weekend. It’s far from the worst thing in NPR’s schedule, though.
I like the show. I switch stations during the credits, because I get tired of hearing the same collection of anagrams. Repeating the same joke isn’t clever.
The rest of the show, though…I find enjoyable.
My local station moved Says You out of the time slot for Ask Me Another. I’m happier this way.
I think the show is still finding itself. The quality of the questions is wildly variable and the host is still working on her consistency. Still, it has a few things going for it:
Ophira Eisenberg has a classic ‘is that a real name’ NPR name.
Pretty much what Mahaloth said. I generally only listen to bits of it as it leads into the Sunday morning broadcast of ‘Wait, Wait’ on my local affiliate. ‘Says You’ bores me to tears.
Also, NPR? We all know the Car Talk guys have retired. Please stop endlessly re-running ancient shows discussing problems with someone’s '83 Accord that in reality was probably junked a decade ago.
I don’t know, I’ve been really enjoying the older shows when I’ve caught them. I think the show was devolving down to a general advice/BS show because diagnosing problems with newer cars really isn’t that interesting (and I’m not so sure C&C ever fully got the hang of electronic engine controls). Listening to them diagnose the old jalopies in the re-runs is pretty fun though, especially with all the wacky foreign cars NPR listeners used to drive back in the day.
Add me to this list. The musical clues grate on me in a way that WWDTM’s lyrics don’t. And no Paula Poundstone, or definitive personalities like hers, have surfaced yet.
Side note: at a book store’s Check it Out table, I saw a book by Ophira Eisenberg - something about sleeping around until she found what she was looking for; can’t recall if it was love, better sense of self…
I quite like it, but I think I’m also probably dead in the middle of the demographic. For me, it’s funny/silly in an entertaining way. I like the hosts (I finally understand the appeal of Jonathan Coulton). I like the puzzles/quizzes they put together. I subscribe to the podcast for this, and not for the other NPR quiz shows.
Glad I’m not the only one who finds that Ms. Eisenberg appears to hold rather too high an opinion of her own hipness. The questions, for the most part, present no challenge to me as a listener. Not in the way a Rubik’s Cube would.* Which is pretty much the only prize that I think I would value less than Carl Kassel’s voice on my answering machine or voicemail.**
I’d rather have reruns of that morning’s episode of Whad’ya Know? back. And I’d rather have Whad’ya Know? back, while we’re at it.
Also I’d prefer to drive to work on a Sunday night with Snapp Judgement, rather than On Being (is this just a re-tooling of On Religion, btw?). And I’d prefer that The Play’s the Thing return and put Tavis Smiley and Cornel West after that one. Nobody needs The BBC World Service and Witness to run twice.
Unless the way they make it a special “Ask Me Another” Rubik’s Cube is by making all of the surfaces the same color (which strikes me as plausible, considering the difficulty level of their quizzes).
** I hate checking my voicemail, and haven’t even set it up on my cell phone. Clearly, I have no interest in delighting friends, relatives, and dialbots with my close personal friendship to this icon of the newsroom. Maybe if they changed the prize to have him announcing the incoming calls to me,*** I’d both want the prize, and check my messages.
*** “Good day, kaylasdad. You have received seven messages. To listen to your messages, please press 1.” Holy crap, it would be like having Alfred the Butler as my answering service. Hell, yes, I’d want that!
I enjoy it, but I wish they’d increase the difficulty of the questions. I guess it’s an ego boost to listen to the show and know nearly all the answers, but I like to learn new trivia and be impressed with the cleverness of the contestants. I am entertained by it, though.
Says You has a 30% chance I change the station, 70% chance I go ahead and listen (100% chance of channel change if my wife is in the car as she doesn’t like it).
Ask Me Another has a 10% chance I’ll listen, and a 90% chance I change the station.
i love it. I think the games are quite creative and while many have flopped there have been some amusing ones: this, that, or the other! The self-deprecation and the repeated need to correct Jeopardy and literal spelling bee answers are quite funny. The hosts are all about my age so I think I get a lot of the extra jokes or references which certainly helps.
Sure some questions are easy, but Ophira’s smugness is nothing compared to Will Shortz… whom I will never listen to again. One more reference to table tennis or his freaking puzzle degree and I am going to paddle him into a puddle.
Does anybody think the pacing of Ask Me Another is an issue? I like the premise of the show, yes the questions are too easy, I like Jonathan Colton, I’m not crazy about Ms. Eisenberg, but it’s the pacing that drive me up the wall. It’s very clunky in a stop-and-start kind of way, at least to me. Unfortunately that pace makes me not want to pay much attention to it.
Ask Me Another is pretty good. The questions are easy, but there’s something sufficiently clever and goofy about them, and the music, that I like.
I do prefer Says You, though, and not just because I’m crushing on one of the panelists. I’ve been to a couple tapings (you can hear me call out an answer in one) and met the host. I’ve sent in some questions, but he hasn’t used any yet.
