Why isn't Question Time as entertaining as it used to be & what should be done about it

Watching the recent Question Time reminded me, as a former addict of the programme, that it's been many years since I've watched it more than very occasionally.

There are two reasons why it lost its grip on me, and I'm curious to know whether I'm alone in my disaffection for the show

1. Unpredictable eccentric or straight man?

For me, the first step downhill came when the BBC selected Peter Sissons to replace the late Sir Robin Day in the chair, and the second when they appointed David Dimbleby to take over from Sissons.

I've nothing against Sissons or Dimbleby, other than that they are too straight and predictable to make the programme anything like as entertaining as it was when Day was in charge.

Apart from his quick wit, Day's assets included impatience, irritability and an adversarial willingness to put people in their places, regardless of whether they were on the panel or in the audience - all of which you can see being displayed in a short video of the virtuoso in action on the BBC website a few months ago HERE.

For what it's worth, my candidate for the job after Day retired would have been Peter Snow, after whom I'd have gone for Jeremy Paxman. Different from Day, yes, but both with a degree of eccentricity and unpredictability of the kind that used to make Question Time so very entertaining.

2. Five guests on the panel is one guest too many

The programme was originally conceived as a television version of Radio 4's long running Any Questions, which had and still has four guests on the panel. But some time back, Question Time added a fifth member to the panel.

This has not only reduced the amount of time available for each speaker, but has also made it easier for some guests to hog the conversation to the exclusion of others (e.g Jack Straw in the most recent show).

There are also, as readers of Lend Me Your Ears will know, some good technical reasons why the smooth operation of turn-taking tends to degenerate as the numbers involved increases - and becomes especially tricky once you have six people sitting around a table, as on Question Time in its current form.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE ABOUT IT?

1. Replace David Dimbleby with Jeremy Paxman of Newsnight or recruit Jon Snow from Channel 4 News (and/or perhaps rotate the chair in the way that's worked pretty well on Have I got News for You).

2. Go back to having four guests on the panel instead of five.

(See also the Not the Nine O'clock News version of QT).

P.S.

Mark Pack has added a good point to this on his blog via BloggersCircle:

'.. for me at least there is a different key factor:with the huge increase in the number of media outlets over the last 20 years, it's just simply no longer as interesting to see politicians being questioned - because you see, hear and read them answering questions all over the place nearly all the time.'

I agree that the increase in media outlets and the fact that we now see more of them being questioned are things I hadn't taken into account.

However, I don't think we see or hear them actually answering questions - with one exception HERE - and their routine evasiveness has been a regular theme on this blog since it started just over a year ago to which a selection of links can be found at the bottom of this post on a duel between Andrew Neil and Yvette Cooper).

You can also link to some more amusing links to classic interviews below:

· A prime minister who openly refused to answer an interviewer’s questions

· A Tory leader's three evasive answers to the same question

· A Labour leader with no interest in spin!

Claptrap 9: Broadcasters' bile and SDP sulks

This is the ninth in a series of posts marking the 25th anniversary of the publication of Our Masters' Voicesand the televising of Claptrap by Granada Television.

Part 1: Claptrap - The Movie

Part 2: Eureka!
Part 3: News leaks out of the lecture theatre
Part 4: How to get a book published

Part 5: In the right places at the right times

Part 6: An offer I couldn't refuse

Part 7: On location

Part 8: Sparks in the background

An earlier posting of an excerpt from Ann Brennan’s speech (HERE) prompted the following comment from Chris Rodgers, a former member of the SDP:

‘I was a member of the audience that day in the autumn of 1984, in Buxton's Pavilion Gardens, as the SDP debated a typically learned (but dry) paper on equality.

‘Then Ann Brennan rose to speak. I can confirm that her well crafted and superbly delivered speech was a breath of fresh air. It was accompanied throughout by applause, cheering and the stamping of feet. When Shirley Williams tried to 'call time', at the end of the allotted four minutes, she was shouted down by party members. Ann Brennan left to a deserved standing ovation.’

BBC approves and disapproves
As the standing ovation got under way, Sir Robin Day, the commentator on BBC Television’s live coverage of the conference, described it as ‘the most refreshing speech we’ve heard all week and the audience would have liked her to go on ...’

Meanwhile, his colleague Peter Snow, who had wanted me to appear on Newsnight after the Chesterfield by-election a few months earlier (see Claptrap 6), had seen us being filmed by the Granada crew as we left the hall - and lost no time in telling Robin Day what was going on.

A few minutes later, Day was almost spluttering with rage as he interrupted a later speech to tell viewers:

"An extraordinary story is beginning to emerge.. it seems that Ann Brennan who's just got a standing ovation was coached by a Dr Max Atkinson, an Oxford don who's an expert in - er - an expert - er -in how people wave their hands about when making speeches - for a television programme being made by Granada Television - and there'll be a tremendous row between the SDP and Granada for interfering with the proceedings of their conference.."

Meanwhile, Peter Snow was hot on the trail outside the hall and had rounded up three delegates to interview live on air.

When he tried to get them to denounce us for what we'd done, the first two seemed quite relaxed about it, saying that they were applauding the sentiment of what Ann Brennan had been saying.

The third interviewee, to Snow's obvious disappointment, rounded off his comment by saying: "In any case, if you can be coached to get a standing ovation, I'd like to have a course of their coaching."

(I hope to post clips of these gems - if and when I ever discover how to transfer video from an ancient Betamax machine to a computer).

Broadcasters' bile

Until then, it had never really occurred to me just how fierce the competition between the BBC and commercial broadcasters was - a fact that was amplified further by an invitation to Ann Brennan and me to appear on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour - that was withdrawn as soon as they realised that Granada would be broadcasting a documentary on it about ten days later.

SDP sulks

After posting Claptrap 1, an exchange between David Cox and me discussed the way the SDP had reacted at the time:

Cox: I think the SDP used the speech on their party political broadcast. I think I'm right in saying more people joined the SDP after her speech as well.

Atkinson: As far as I remember, the SDP never used anything from Ann's speech for a PPB. They did however use Rosie Barnes (in one of the worst PPB's I've ever seen) and a lot of people used to confuse the two of them.

It wouldn't surprise me if new members came in after the speech. What did surprise me was that the SDP leadership, Owen included, were fuming about it. They thought it a disgraceful 'stunt', and I remember trying to convince them that it was excellent PR for them that they should make the most of. If nothing else, it meant that the 1984 conference got far more media coverage than it otherwise would have done.

Cox: ‘Disgraceful stunt' ! What is false or distasteful about giving somebody the skills to communicate and articulate their ideas; after all, Ann was given the training, but the message was Ann’s, and it was Ann who delivered it.

Question Time wooden spoon: Jack Straw

Until watching the latest Question Time, I'd always thought of Gordon Brown as the current champion among British politicians when it came to being long-winded and packing far too much into speeches and interview responses (e.g. HERE).

But I'm now beginning to think that Jack Straw may have overtaken his boss.

How someone who, as he reminded us, has been an MP for 30 years can be so verbose and undisciplined in his answers on a 60 minute show - in which there are 4 other guests on the panel and a large audience trying to get a word in - is quite beyond me.

Having been invited to speak first in response to the very first question, Straw droned on (aided in various places by notes) for two and a half minutes! So, by the time anyone else got a chance to say anything, he'd already managed to gobble up 4% of the scheduled time available for lesser mortals to say anything.

And that was only the first of quite a few more of his answers that were needlessly long-winded and garbled - but even I am not enough of an anorak to be able to bear the tedium of going through the whole thing in order to work out exactly how much time he managed to bag from everyone else.

Don't put clocks back (again)

REPEAT OF LAST YEAR"S POST ON THE GLOOMIEST DAY OF THE YEAR

If you find the darker afternoons that start tomorrow a depressing and pointless exercise, you might be interested in an article in The Times a few days ago (HERE for the full story from last year).

Apart from relieving the gloom, not putting the clocks back tonight would reduce electricity consumption by 1-2% and save NHS expenditure on dealing with accidents and emergencies:

“During an experiment 40 years ago, when British Summer Time was used all year for three years, there was an average of 2,500 fewer deaths and serious injuries each year. Opposition from Scotland contributed to the decision to return to putting the clocks back in winter.”

If putting the clocks back is such a big deal for the Scots, why don’t we let them do it on their own, especially now they have their own parliament in Edinburgh?

A different time zone in Scotland might be marginally inconvenient for the rest of us, but no more so than it already is when trying to plan meetings in other EC countries.

How rhetorical techniques work: an example from last night's Question Time

(Postscript on the 'star of the show' added on Saturday 24th October)

I'm quite often asked how rhetorical techniques actually work to trigger a positive response from members of an audience.

Part of the answer is because their structure provides listeners with implicit instructions that enable them to anticipate exactly when the speaker will finish - so that they can be ready to respond as soon as he/she gets to the end (in much the same way as we're able to know when to respond in a conversation without interrupting or leaving a potentially embarrassing silence before we start to speak).

So, once someone in an audience notices that a speaker has launched into a contrast, it's pretty easy for them to recognise when the second part of it comes to an end. Or, if you hear a rhetorical question, you'll know that that you'll be able to respond as soon as the answer is completed.

In this sense, audience responses like booing, cheering and clapping are collective versions of the individual turns we take when talking to someone in a conversation (on which there's much more in my books!).

It's not often that television editors let us see members of an audience visibly anticipating one of these completion points, though I've already posted a very clear example of a woman anticipating the answer to a question being posed by David Cameron (HERE).

On BBC Question Time last night, there was a similar example of a listener anticipating the third item in a three-part list as the person in front of her was putting a question to the leader of the BNP.

As he launches into his list, watch the woman behind him on the left, and you'll see her nodding in approval just as he starts the third item in his list - which is also exactly the point at which the applause begins:

Where do you want me to go?

This is my country
I love this country
I'm part of this country

(See also Why lists of three: mystery, magic or reason?)



P.S. AND HE WAS THE STAR OF THE SHOW!

Reading through some of the newspaper reports on the show, I was fascinated to see that this particular speaker was singled out in quite a few of them as the star of the show, as in this from The Guardian:

If there was a star of Nick Griffin's personal Question Time, it was not to be found on the panel of guests.

Instead it took a member of the audience to deliver a gift to headline writers across the globe and raise the loudest cheer.

Khush Klare, 38, whose parents emigrated from India in the 1960s, didn't plan it so. But as the microphone swung in his direction he heard himself asking Griffin: "Where would you like to me go? I was born in this country. I love this country."

However, it was his subsequent suggestion of a "whip-round" to send Griffin to the south pole – "It's a colourless landscape that will suit you fine" – that proved the undoubted highlight.
(see HERE for full Guardian report and interview with Mr Klare).

The reason this fascinated me is that the connection between effective speaking and the way the media selects and covers excerpts from speeches is something that has interested me for more than 25 years, and was a main focus in Chapter 5 ('Quotability) of Our Masters' Voices.

After recent posts on the effectiveness of 'surfing applause' by both Gordon Brown and David Cameron in their recent party conference speeches, it was great to see yet another example of surfing serving a speaker so well.

In the full sequence from Mr Klare's question below, you'll see that he follows an initial attempt to carry on speaking during the applause with a more determined effort as he continued towards the line about having a whip round to send the BNP leader to the colourless landscape of the South Pole:

How often do politicians watch television?

In the run-up to the BNP leader's first appearance on BBC TV's Quesion TIme later tonight, the Number 10 website had an interesting snippet about Gordon Brown's plans for the evening:

'Asked whether the Prime Minister was planning to watch Question Time, the PMS replied that the Prime Minister did not routinely watch Question Time.'

This reminded me of something I remember being surprised by when I was more actively involved in day-to-day politics:
however keen politicians might be to appear on the box, they didn't actually watch television very often themselves - not least because the timing of House of Commons proceedings meant that they wouldn't be able to see prime-time shows even if they'd wanted to.

As I'm not sure if my Betamax video recorder still works, I can't show you a gem from one of Mrs Thatcher's early Conservative Party conference speeches after becoming prime minister.

It was around the time that Heineken lager was running TV commercials (later banned because they claimed health benefits from drinking the stuff) that ended with the slogan "The beer that reaches parts that other beers can't reach".

My reason for thinking Mrs Thatcher had never seen or heard of the commercial came as she was thanking her cabinet ministers. Of Lord Carrington, the then foreign secretary, she said:

"He really is the peer that reaches parts that other peers can't reach."

The audience, most of whom must have been watching television often enough to be familiar with the slogan, loved it. But, as the laughter and applause got under way, Mrs Thatcher looked visibly surprised and said under her breath, and presumably with earlier arguments with speechwriters in mind:

"Oh - it did work then."

So I wasn't at all surprised to learn that Mr Brown doesn't 'routinely watch Question Time', and suspect that, like Mrs Thatcher and many other politicians, he hardly ever watches any television at all.

Steve Jobs shows how to use an object as a visual aid (and how to speak about it)

When teaching and writing about the effectiveness of different types of visual aid, one that I always recommend for getting a positive response from audiences is the use of an object or prop to get your point across.

If you've seen Ann Brennan's speech (4th video clip in Claptrap 1), you might have noticed that the audience laughed and applauded when she held up a copy of the paper on equality that she was speaking about.

Earlier posts on the same theme include a clip showing the Archbishop of York taking off his dog collar and cutting it into pieces during a TV interview, another in which Bill Gates appears to release some mosquitos from a box in a TED talk about malaria and one in which a Nobel prize winner commends a lecturer for using a mock-up of turbine blades.

And so to the case of the announcement in 2008 of the MacBook Air notebook by Apple's Steve Jobs that was recently brought to my notice by Twitterers (to whom thanks) - and on which there may well be a few more posts in the near future.

STEVE JOBS TAKES THE RABBIT OUT OF AN ENVELOPE

One of the high spots, widely hailed as such in reviews of the event, was the way Jobs introduced the new notebook by pulling it out of a very ordinary looking office envelope - which occurred after an extended build-up in which he'd been contrasting the thinness and other virtues of the yet to be revealed MacBook Air with the thickness and other (inferior) features of its competitors.

Details worth noting in the video clip below include:

1. A well-timed open armed 'iconic' gesture that gets under way just before he says ".. floating around the office" (on the timing of which, see also the recent post about iconic gestures in relation to Churchill's 'iron curtain' speech).
2. The leisurely four seconds he takes to move across to where he can pick up the envelope.
3. The instant positive audience response as he picks up the envelope.
4. The way this response grows into hoots, cheers and applause when he holds it up in the air.
5. The fact that he lets the applause continue for 8 seconds before his first attempt to continue speaking (for more on the 8 ± 1 seconds standard burst of applause, see HERE and HERE).
6. His slow and unhurried removal of the MacBook Air from the envelope.
7. After saying "there it is", waits until 9 seconds of applause has elapsed (i.e. within the 8 ± 1 second standard burst again) before saying anything else.
8. Shows the keyboard and display before saying "full size keyboard full size display" (iconic gesture precedes the words again - see 1 above).
9. On average, he pauses every 5.5 words - i.e. at a very similar rate to that found in speeches by accomplished orators like Churchill, Thatcher, Reagan, Clinton, Blair and Cameron (for more on which, see HERE)
10. He walks (unhurriedly) large distances from one side of the stage to the other.
11. And smiling for some of the time (but not all of the time) is no bad thing either.

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAIL

Were any of these details actually noticed by any of those who were there at the time and/or who wrote about it as a masterful performance?

Probably not - other than, perhaps, that it was like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat whilst talking about it in a natural, confident and enthusiastic way.

The fact that it's almost certain that few, if any of these details were consciously identified by the audience is one of reasons why I think it's such an excellent example of effective speaking in action (as it was widely recognised as having been) - for the obvious reason that it confirms pretty much everything I've learnt, taught and written about in nearly 30 years of research, namely that the more details you can get right, the more impressed will your audience be.

TRANSCRIPT

The line-breaks in the following are where pauses occur:

So
it’s so thin
it even fits inside
one of these envelopes we’ve all seen floating around the office.
And so let me go ahead an show it to you now.
This is it.
Let me take it out here.
This is the new
MacBook Air
And you can get a feel for how thin it is.
Yeh – there it is.
Right.
Amazing product here – full-size keyboard
Full size display