“Learn to listen!” – Talk show advice from the stars

Why does talk work? What makes a good talk show host and what is a great personality on radio? That was the premise for a meeting with two successful, but very different European radio personalites.

“They are dispatching me to Denmark! What can the Danes learn from me?” Vanessa Feltz from the BBC asked her “lovely listeners” in London yesterday. A whole lot, as it turned out.

She tends to avoid holidays; she doesn’t want anyone else taking over her show. Even one day in Denmark was out of the question until the BBC made her.

Feltz has presented her BBC London talk show since 2002, from 9 am to 12, six days a week. She prepares three subjects every morning, runs it by her producer and her researcher, and let the callers phone in. She knows her listeners are busy at that time, so she has to make herself impossible to ignore. Why should they phone her? Only if she can think of something that intrigues them or touches them enough.

Norway’s Kari Slaatsveen presents the weekly “Kveldsmat” (“Supper”), a late evening show. As a presenter, she has moved from the public broadcaster NRK’s young P3 to the mainstream NRK P1, but her audience since 1993 has moved with her. She claims that this is the key to her success. Her recognizable personality and her listeners are growing old together, as she puts it.

“Kveldsmat” is a programme full of stories, illusions, her own poems and those of the listeners, and often downright lies. She plays music that she picks herself, and considers the choices as a part of her personality as well.

How do you get the right people to call? Again, recognizability. Vanessa’s and Kari’s listeners know them, often through other media as well, and they can identify with them.

Where Vanessa says she’s “paid by the word”, Kari uses music and pauses and improvises. She needs to be extremely focused during improvisations. She never uses manuscripts, but sometimes notes. There is still a plan: the words are in her head, her experience is there, and making and telling stories involve preparation. But her mind wanders, live on air…

You need the right subject and the right approach, Vanessa Feltz says. Be frank if the subject is difficult, and the first callers inspire others.

“Good callers come from focusing on the topic, not flirting with listeners,” Kari Slaatsveen says.

The final pieces of advice for aspiring hosts:

“Learn to listen!” (Vanessa)

“Don’t be afraid!” and “observe!” (Kari)