Why I don't like Christopher Lydon
Jun. 19th, 2006 09:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miko2Christopher Lydon is the host of the PRI show Open Source (which I hear on my local NPR station). It's a basic talk show as far as I'm concerned -- Lydon starts off with a few experts, has them discuss the topic at hand, and then invites callers into have their say, or talks about what people are posting on their messge board. As a show, it's usually more interesting than the typical talk show, but not a whole lot more interesting.
What bugs me about it is their insistence that their radio show "works the way the internet does, fast and free". No, it does not. It works the way a radio talk show works, thank you very much. I mean, really, what's that supposed to even mean anyway? You have guests, you have people that call in, you have a host guiding the conversation. What about this is in anyway like the internet?
If you wanted your radio show to really and truly be like the internet, here are some things that I thing ought to be essential:
1. Random Flame Wars Let's face it, there really are some radio shows out there where the guests scream at each other... but I've never heard that on Open Source. No flame wars? Open Source is clearly a different animal from the internet.
2. Topic Drift Christopher Lydon does a great job of keeping the show on-topic, which, as most of you know, is nothing like the internet. In fact you almost never see people stay on topic on the internet. Once again, Open Source proves it's a very different thing (a radio show, in case anyone was wondering).
3. Dead Horse Beating If you really want to run a radio show in the same way the internet is run, then you need to bring up old arguments again and again and again. Then you need people to point out that we're beating a dead horse. Then you beat it some more. Hey, it's not necessarily great entertainment, but it is how the internet works.
4. Cr34tiv3 (133t) Sp311ing I mean really. The internet is all about people who can't spell or can't string sentences together, or who deliberatly misspell words or use other "leet" language. It's all over the place. If you want a radio show to be like the internet, you've got to translate things into leet, somehow.
5. Spam and Popup Ads Everyone knows the internet means ad spam in your e-mail and popup ad spam when you surf. You might be able to block most of it, but not quite all of it. I don't see anything about the show Open Source that comes close. It's on Public Radio, fer gosh sakes! No ads at all!
6. Stupid Memes and Oddball Links to Weird Pictures & Movies This is what most blogs are about, right? That and bad poetry about how depressed you are because you're a teenager.
Mostly, however, what they probably want to stress is that, on the internet, practically anyone can have their say, and they want you to think that their radio show is the same. Only they screen their callers, just like any good radio show does. On the internet, you get a thousand people saying what they want to say at the same time. On Open Source, you get screened callers who get a couple of minutes to say something before they move on to the next caller. That's just like any other talk radio show, it's nothing like how the internet works.
On the positive side, as I said, Lydon does a pretty good job of running a talk radio show. Unlike, say, Warren Olney from To The Point, whose main skill seems to be asking pertinent questions and then interrupting his guests before they've managed to give a complete answer. He's also good at asking big questions when he's 15 seconds from going to a break, so that his guests really don't get the chance to answer at all.
What bugs me about it is their insistence that their radio show "works the way the internet does, fast and free". No, it does not. It works the way a radio talk show works, thank you very much. I mean, really, what's that supposed to even mean anyway? You have guests, you have people that call in, you have a host guiding the conversation. What about this is in anyway like the internet?
If you wanted your radio show to really and truly be like the internet, here are some things that I thing ought to be essential:
1. Random Flame Wars Let's face it, there really are some radio shows out there where the guests scream at each other... but I've never heard that on Open Source. No flame wars? Open Source is clearly a different animal from the internet.
2. Topic Drift Christopher Lydon does a great job of keeping the show on-topic, which, as most of you know, is nothing like the internet. In fact you almost never see people stay on topic on the internet. Once again, Open Source proves it's a very different thing (a radio show, in case anyone was wondering).
3. Dead Horse Beating If you really want to run a radio show in the same way the internet is run, then you need to bring up old arguments again and again and again. Then you need people to point out that we're beating a dead horse. Then you beat it some more. Hey, it's not necessarily great entertainment, but it is how the internet works.
4. Cr34tiv3 (133t) Sp311ing I mean really. The internet is all about people who can't spell or can't string sentences together, or who deliberatly misspell words or use other "leet" language. It's all over the place. If you want a radio show to be like the internet, you've got to translate things into leet, somehow.
5. Spam and Popup Ads Everyone knows the internet means ad spam in your e-mail and popup ad spam when you surf. You might be able to block most of it, but not quite all of it. I don't see anything about the show Open Source that comes close. It's on Public Radio, fer gosh sakes! No ads at all!
6. Stupid Memes and Oddball Links to Weird Pictures & Movies This is what most blogs are about, right? That and bad poetry about how depressed you are because you're a teenager.
Mostly, however, what they probably want to stress is that, on the internet, practically anyone can have their say, and they want you to think that their radio show is the same. Only they screen their callers, just like any good radio show does. On the internet, you get a thousand people saying what they want to say at the same time. On Open Source, you get screened callers who get a couple of minutes to say something before they move on to the next caller. That's just like any other talk radio show, it's nothing like how the internet works.
On the positive side, as I said, Lydon does a pretty good job of running a talk radio show. Unlike, say, Warren Olney from To The Point, whose main skill seems to be asking pertinent questions and then interrupting his guests before they've managed to give a complete answer. He's also good at asking big questions when he's 15 seconds from going to a break, so that his guests really don't get the chance to answer at all.
