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Colorado Media Newsroom
December 12th, 2022, 06:50 AM
From Talkers:

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By Holland Cooke
Consultant

https://www.talkers.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/cookewriter.jpg (https://www.talkers.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/cookewriter.jpg)BLOCK ISLAND, RI —*Conversation can seduce the listener. All our lives, we?ve leaned-into interviews by artful practitioners such as unabashed Howard Stern, probing Mike Wallace, curious Larry King, thoughtful Dick Cavett, and everyman Tom Snyder. They had a knack for asking precisely what you were wondering.
?I never learned anything while I was talking.?
Larry King got many of the same guests as other shows along the PR tour, but he often got them to say something they hadn?t said elsewhere, because he listened so carefully, and picked-up on something, then followed-up.
Jay Leno reckons that ?Most people aren?t really listening and have no idea how to carry on a conversation.* They?re waiting for people to stop talking so they can start. I?m generally interested in what people have to say. I?m not that interested in my side of the story.?
Google ?Jack Paar.? His advice to young Dick Cavett: ?Don?t do interviews. Make it a conversation.?
And how many times did ?60 Minutes? make news, because Mike Wallace, as he put it, ?Let the answer hang there for two or three or four seconds,? and his subject kept talking.
Anatomy of a good question?
C-SPAN founder Brian Lamb: ?My approach to interviewing is to ask the basic questions that might even sound na?ve, or not intellectual. Sometimes when you ask the simple questions like ?Who are you?? or ?What do you do?? you learn the most.?
Larry King was master of “The Short Question.” I remember him asking Bob Hope, ?Who do YOU think is funny?? And asking David Duke, ?Don?t you ever get tired of hating?? And asking Frankie Valli, ?What?s on YOUR iPod?? Note the magic words, ?you? and ?your.?
Bill Thompson introduced me to Mickey Mantle and Mickey Rooney and nearly everyone else on the book tours that wound through WTOP and USA Today when we worked together there. His star-studded archive is ?Now I?ve Heard Everything (http://heardeverything.com/).? Two tips:


?No interviewer can possibly think of everything a guest might want to say. So I now end every interview by asking, ?Is there anything else you wanted to add, or any question you wanted me to ask you that I didn?t?? About one third of the time, the best sound bite of the interview comes from their answer to that question.?
?You?ve no doubt seen interviewing how-to?s that say, ?Never ask a yes-or-no question.? Break a rule. I ask yes-or-no questions daily, and get great answers. The likelihood of a guest giving a monosyllabic answer is almost nil.?

Certainly this advice to podcasters also applies to broadcast talkers, many of whom favor monologue over what can be more seductive dialogue. But unrestrained by broadcasting?s time restrictions and mandate for mass-appeal content, podcasters can invite conversation with guests of very specific appeal and expertise. Midroll Media?s Paul Riismandel suggests seeking out people your audience already knows. ?They may not be famous to the world, but in the world of rose gardening , they?re an absolute superstar.? And the free prize inside is that they come with their own social following.
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*[I]Holland Cooke (HollandCooke.com (http://hollandcooke.com/)) is the author of ?Multiply Your Podcast Subscribers, Without Buying Clicks,? available from Talkers books (https://hollandcooke.com/podcast-game-changer-technique/); and ?Spot-On: Commercial Copy Points That Earned The Benjamins,? a FREE download (http://getonthenet.com/SpotOn-HollandCooke.pdf); and the E-book and FREE on-air radio features ?Inflation Hacks: Save Those Benjamins (https://hollandcooke.com/download-inflation-hacks/).? HC is a consultant working at the intersection of broadcasting and the Internet. Follow him on Twitter @HollandCooke
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