It’s always jarring to see the true faces of radio personalities. My carefully crafted mental image of NPR broadcasters and podcast hosts (based solely on their voices) is always shattered once I see the real thing.
It was no different when I attended a live taping of “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me” at the Palace Theatre in Waterbury two weeks ago. But once I got over seeing Peter Sagal as a bald man in his late forties, I enjoyed a hilarious show, and many insights into the inner workings of radio production.
For those who don’t know, “Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me” is a comedy-news-quiz show that airs every Saturday on NPR. Each week, host Peter Sagal asks a panel of three humorists, as well as call-in contestants, questions about the weird and obscure in that week’s news, while poking fun at politics and public figures. A famous guest comes on each episode for a quick interview followed by a multiple choice three-question game of bizarre, silly trivia designed to be about a topic the guest knows nothing about. The show is fun, funny and informative.
I’ve been listening to the show on the radio or in podcast form for the last few years now, and it was fascinating to finally see how it’s all done. The stage was simply set: two podiums stood to the left, reserved for Sagal and score keeper/announcer Carl Kassel. To the right was a table set for the three panel members, and in the middle was a comfy armchair on a homey-looking rug. Behind all of this, still visible to the audience but virtually unknown to those listening at home, was a long table filled with producers and tech people all wearing headsets and surrounded by wires, phones and other complicated devices.
The show was introduced by the guy who always says “This is NPR” at the end of all the news reports (which was pretty exciting) and then Sagal, Kassel and the panel members took their places. The show proceeded in the same order as it does on air, except that instead of enjoying Korva Coleman’s monotone news reports during the breaks, we got to witness Peter Sagal’s hilarious impressions of them, as well as other insider jokes and gags. Seeing it live, I also got to hear all of the mistakes, a few stumbled lines and such, which stood out only because I’ve become so used to the seemingly smooth and flawless radio broadcast.
The most exciting thing about being there in person was getting to see the celebrity guest live, who, this week, happened to be talk show personality Jerry Springer. When they announced at the beginning that we would be seeing him on stage, I wasn’t particularly excited. However, during the interview he turned out to be smart, funny and shockingly honest about the trashy show that has made him so famous.
“It’s really just the same thing over and over again in every episode,” Springer said. “The only thing that changes is the amount of furniture that gets thrown around.”
And did you know Springer used to be a politician? He was the former mayor of Cincinnati, in fact. Since then, he’s been a political contributor on multiple television programs and a radio news anchor. He even had his own sex scandal when he once paid a prostitute with a signed check. Stupid, he admitted, but he was young then “and she never cashed it, so I didn’t have to pay a thing!”
Other random Jerry Springer facts: he released a country music album in the 80s, and was recently in a Broadway production of the musical Chicago. It was a great interview, and when Springer stood up to leave from his cushy red chair he was met with a theater of applause mixed with the iconic chanting of his name.
The show went on, with another guest caller and a round of “Lightning Fill in the Blank.” It was at this point, at the very end of the show, I realized that we had been sitting there for two hours. This was surprising considering that the show is only fifty minutes tops when it airs, not counting commercial breaks, and it made me realize how much trimming occurs to create the final product.
The most surreal part came after the recording was over: Sagal and the panel members spent about ten minutes randomly spouting off lines. They received direction from the producers through their headsets, or at least I assume so, because their re-tries of lines with different inflections or wordings wasn’t prompted by anything the audience could hear. It was sort of amusing at times, like watching Sagal repeat some of the questions he asked Jerry Springer to an empty chair. Most of the lines, it seemed, were re-recorded because of stumbled words or instances where the clapping or laughing drowned them out.
Before we left there was a fun bout of Q&A, culminating in Carl Kassel singing “Happy Birthday” to an audience member. Everyone then said good night.
Just two days later, I listened to the radio broadcast of the show. A lot had been cut, including what I thought were some of the best bits of the Jerry Springer interview, but all the hiccups that we heard live had been smoothed to create a seamless broadcast. There were only one or two points in the show where it was clear to me that a cut had been made, despite the fact that radio broadcast was only half the length of what I saw.
Comparing the show I heard at home to the show I heard in the Palace Theatre gave me a chance to see the amount of work that goes into making the polished show I listen to every week. It was my first live radio show, and it definitely made me want to see more. Hopefully one of these days, the people whose voices I hear every week will look exactly as I imagine them.
