I’ve just been providing ISDN radio interview services for Markettiers4DC. Children’s writer and illustrator Alex T Smith was in the dVoiceBox booth where he was joined by Melanie Goodchild, spokesperson for toy manufacturer Chad Valley.
They were lined up for a dozen radio interviews to talk about new research commissioned by Chad Valley that looked at the time of peak creativity in your life – plus the things that make adults reluctant to read or play with their children. Apparently peak imaginative creativity is at around age 4! Also adults are often reluctant to play with children, or even read stories complete with silly voices, because they feel self conscious or worry that they aren’t “doing it right”.
It was an interesting, varied and enjoyable session – with the usual chops and changes – one radio station pulled out at the last minute, another station took the interview live on-air but the presenter sounded woefully under prepared, while others were well prepared, asked good questions and got great interaction with the guests.
This kind of ISDN radio session often gives me a slight pang of nostalgia – in all my years of working as a radio presenter I did loads of ISDN interviews. Many times in the past I was like the presenters I heard in this session – checking levels, struggling with the weird echo effect you get on ISDN lines, explaining about the pre-recorded or live nature of the interview, asking the questions. Now I find it’s interesting to be at the other end of that process.
However, unlike when I was the radio interviewer, these days I certainly have much more of an appreciation of how hard it is for the interviewees: constantly answering the same questions in each interview while trying to make it sound like they’re saying it for the first time. Both Alex and Melanie did a great job.