5 ms·

charlie rose was awful at interviewing people. he constantly interrupted interesting thoughts. he just had to get a word in at a set rate. yet somehow they con

by exit 9y ago

charlie rose was awful at interviewing people. he constantly interrupted interesting thoughts. he just had to get a word in at a set rate. yet somehow they consistently booked very interesting guests. i'll give you that, but that's what the show had going for it, not the eponymous interviewer.

covercash 9y ago
Send that booking agent to Hot Ones and get those guests in front of Sean Evans. He digs deep and does wonderful interviews.
- sincerely 9y ago
  I generally agree with you, but his interview with the Chicken Connoisseur was embarrassingly bad, starting with the choice of setting and the small talk he opened with...
deleted 9y ago
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ghostcluster 9y ago
nah, he was really good at interviewing people and directing interesting longform discussion on a huge variety of topics. better than pretty much anyone else.
- jacobolus 9y ago
  No, he was really good at getting great guests onto his show, with a long-enough format to have some time for conversation. He was absolutely atrocious at the actual interviewing part. He would constantly make stupid paragraph-long statements and then at the end ask “don’t you agree?”, then when the guest started to explain that no the statement was wrong or oversimplified, he would interrupt them and repeat his point again. He was constantly shitting all over guests who he disagreed with or didn’t think were cool enough, telling them they were wrong and trying to get them to repeat whatever he happened to think, even if they were world-class experts on some topic he didn’t know anything about. He was constantly kissing up like crazy to anyone he thought was rich or famous or powerful, in a way that was really uncomfortable to watch (his numerous sycophantic interviews with Tom Friedman make my skin crawl). He never seemed to listen very closely to what anyone was saying: I don’t think I ever heard a poignant or insightful follow-up question in the hundreds of his interviews I have seen. Instead he would often interrupt right in the middle of some complicated interesting thought, and throw in a non-sequitur, jolting the conversation to a new (often stupid) topic. My favorite Charlie Rose moment was sometime like 15 years ago when he had on (if I recall correctly) Bill Joy. Charlie made some incredibly banal and obvious paragraph-long statement with a question mark at the end, and then looked at the guest, who was just staring at him. There was a long uncomfortable pause, after which the response was, “well, duh.” If you want to see a stark comparison, find any week where the same guest was interviewed by both Charlie Rose and Terry Gross, and listen to the two interviews back to back.
  - ghostcluster 9y ago
    I'm sorry, but I disagree and find you to be twisting and exaggerating a huge volume of work. There are miles and miles of treasure in his archive from people that never spoke for long unstructured amounts of time with anyone else. Terry Gross has big flaws, the biggest of which is how she approaches her interviews much more from a political activist's lens, to the point of being absolutely obnoxious about certain topics or people. There are a wide array of issues I would never want to hear her interview someone about.
    - jacobolus 9y ago
      There are many treasures in Charlie Rose’s archives because of the guests. Again, his show was often worth watching despite him. I’m not just cherry-picking examples though. He did that crap constantly. Almost every interview of his I’ve ever seen was at least mildly frustrating, and often I want to throw my shoe at the screen and tell him to SHUT UP AND LET THE GUEST TALK. Try watching a few of them now, and paying attention to the times that Rose interrupts the guest, makes some sycophantic flattering comment, or repeats his point multiple times after being told it is wrong. The nature of interview shows is that often topics are inherently political (e.g. interviewing a politician, a journalist, an economist, or a political biographer), but Terry Gross is one of the least political interviewers in the media (apart from maybe some late-night comedy hosts who do 5-minute bits), and frequently gets her guests to talk deeply about their lives and families and hobbies even when they originally came to discuss some political topic or shill their latest book or whatever. She approaches her interviews with careful preparation every time (e.g. she actually reads the books), universal politeness, and close listening, and responds to what her guests are saying with interesting topical follow-up questions rather than sticking with a canned script. You might be misinterpreting knowing something about the topic (as Rose typically does not) as “political activism”.
      - abritinthebay 9y ago
        You’re getting downvotes for no good reason (disagreement is a bad reason). I quite strongly agree with you btw. The fact that Charlie Rose is held up as some high standard of interviews should be an inditement of the entire profession in the US because he - compared to actual maters like David Frost, Louis Theroux, and so on - is quite poor. It was his format that was great, not him.

by exit 9y ago

covercash 9y ago

Send that booking agent to Hot Ones and get those guests in front of Sean Evans. He digs deep and does wonderful interviews.

sincerely 9y ago
I generally agree with you, but his interview with the Chicken Connoisseur was embarrassingly bad, starting with the choice of setting and the small talk he opened with...

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

ghostcluster 9y ago

nah, he was really good at interviewing people and directing interesting longform discussion on a huge variety of topics. better than pretty much anyone else.

jacobolus 9y ago
No, he was really good at getting great guests onto his show, with a long-enough format to have some time for conversation. He was absolutely atrocious at the actual interviewing part. He would constantly make stupid paragraph-long statements and then at the end ask “don’t you agree?”, then when the guest started to explain that no the statement was wrong or oversimplified, he would interrupt them and repeat his point again. He was constantly shitting all over guests who he disagreed with or didn’t think were cool enough, telling them they were wrong and trying to get them to repeat whatever he happened to think, even if they were world-class experts on some topic he didn’t know anything about. He was constantly kissing up like crazy to anyone he thought was rich or famous or powerful, in a way that was really uncomfortable to watch (his numerous sycophantic interviews with Tom Friedman make my skin crawl). He never seemed to listen very closely to what anyone was saying: I don’t think I ever heard a poignant or insightful follow-up question in the hundreds of his interviews I have seen. Instead he would often interrupt right in the middle of some complicated interesting thought, and throw in a non-sequitur, jolting the conversation to a new (often stupid) topic. My favorite Charlie Rose moment was sometime like 15 years ago when he had on (if I recall correctly) Bill Joy. Charlie made some incredibly banal and obvious paragraph-long statement with a question mark at the end, and then looked at the guest, who was just staring at him. There was a long uncomfortable pause, after which the response was, “well, duh.” If you want to see a stark comparison, find any week where the same guest was interviewed by both Charlie Rose and Terry Gross, and listen to the two interviews back to back.
- ghostcluster 9y ago
  I'm sorry, but I disagree and find you to be twisting and exaggerating a huge volume of work. There are miles and miles of treasure in his archive from people that never spoke for long unstructured amounts of time with anyone else. Terry Gross has big flaws, the biggest of which is how she approaches her interviews much more from a political activist's lens, to the point of being absolutely obnoxious about certain topics or people. There are a wide array of issues I would never want to hear her interview someone about.
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    There are many treasures in Charlie Rose’s archives because of the guests. Again, his show was often worth watching despite him. I’m not just cherry-picking examples though. He did that crap constantly. Almost every interview of his I’ve ever seen was at least mildly frustrating, and often I want to throw my shoe at the screen and tell him to SHUT UP AND LET THE GUEST TALK. Try watching a few of them now, and paying attention to the times that Rose interrupts the guest, makes some sycophantic flattering comment, or repeats his point multiple times after being told it is wrong. The nature of interview shows is that often topics are inherently political (e.g. interviewing a politician, a journalist, an economist, or a political biographer), but Terry Gross is one of the least political interviewers in the media (apart from maybe some late-night comedy hosts who do 5-minute bits), and frequently gets her guests to talk deeply about their lives and families and hobbies even when they originally came to discuss some political topic or shill their latest book or whatever. She approaches her interviews with careful preparation every time (e.g. she actually reads the books), universal politeness, and close listening, and responds to what her guests are saying with interesting topical follow-up questions rather than sticking with a canned script. You might be misinterpreting knowing something about the topic (as Rose typically does not) as “political activism”.
    - abritinthebay 9y ago
      You’re getting downvotes for no good reason (disagreement is a bad reason). I quite strongly agree with you btw. The fact that Charlie Rose is held up as some high standard of interviews should be an inditement of the entire profession in the US because he - compared to actual maters like David Frost, Louis Theroux, and so on - is quite poor. It was his format that was great, not him.