Occasional Jots and Tittles

I spent the evening at a live taping of “Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me”, the public radio news quiz show, in New Orleans tonight. I came away with a great appreciation for what they do to get the show on the air.

The total recording time ran close to two hours, which means that almost half of what transpired will end up on the cutting room floor. That’s not surprising, considering some of what was said (and what I’m sure would make a fantastic outakes/blooper tape for the show). Some observations and thoughts:

1. Amy Dickinson (“Ask Amy”) has a potty mouth. Who would have thought such a mild-mannered, nice advice columnist could come up with some of what she had to say about Eric Massa? Some of it will probably make it onto Saturday’s broadcast (3/13/2010), but the rest? Well, as she said, “What’s said in the room, stays in the room”.

2. All three panelists (Roy Blount, Jr., Amy Dickinson, and Mo Rocka) are quick on the draw with their comebacks and one-liners. Much of the show was clearly unscripted and they have great chemistry as a group.

3. Carl Kassel is amazingly spry for a man of his age and he’s no slouch with the one-liners either. On the air, as scorekeeper and judge he doesn’t get to say much, but they cut out a lot of ad libs from him that are great zingers.

4. The entire cast kept going on about what a wonderful place New Orleans was and how great an audience we were compared to many of the places they go. It could have been the usual BS from visiting artists but they really did seem to be having a great time. In fact, the three panelists mentioned they should get a time-share and come live down here part of the year. They sounded believable to me.

All in all, there’s a LOT they’ll have to cut from tonight’s recordings to go on the air. My original fear, when we sat down, was that they’d have too much material and not know what to sacrifice to fit the time limit. After listening to the Massa bit (a good 6 minutes worth) and a few other riffs that really got out of hand, I realized the opposite was a more likely problem: if you cut out all the stuff not suitable for NPR, you may not have an hour’s broadcast to work with.

All in all, it was a blast – it’ll be interesting to hear the final version of the show in 2 days.