Radio relaxation
Someone correct me if I'm wrong but does it seem to anyone else that the kinds of things cricketers say on radio stations, they wouldn't say on television. I'm thinking here, obviously, of Matt Hayden's description of Harbhajan as an "obnoxious weed". There is nothing particularly derogatory in that description, its just that somehow, I can't imagine Hayden saying this to say, Channel 9 or Sky commentators. Television interviews have become exceedingly banal, the questions do not rise above the level of cliche, and unsurprisingly, neither do the answers. The air of a mega-production hangs over the proceedings, the commentators are nattily dressed, and it might all seem a bit proper. But a radio interview is different; you can spend a lot of time chatting, and the conversation can become freewheeling in the hands of an interviewer used to drawing out reluctant interviewees. As the American talk-show radio experience shows, some of the most pointed discussions on topics often felt to be too 'hot' for television take place on air. I'm not going to touch on the larger issue of how toxic such discussions can get, but let me just say for the record that the discussions I've heard on local radio stations about the fortunes of New York teams far exceeds anything I've ever seen on network television (and certainly Imus was legendary for the kinds of political discussions he could get going). Its not clear whether Hayden was being interviewed on the studio, or whether he was on the phone, but clearly the interview relaxed him to the point where he felt he could speak more freely (compare this to his television pronouncements, which are always generic in the extreme).