Piece Comment

Review of "More Civil Liberties, Less Fear"


This module/segment is a clever idea: set up a cider stand and interview the people who visit. It's a creative spin on the old "Interviews 50 cents" concept. This particular segment features an interesting voice and perspective.
Some notes:
* Some of the edits are pretty obvious and should be tightened up a bit.
* The producer's voice appears at the beginning and end of the piece voicing a one-sentence overview and some credits. This is distracting and unnecessary. The interviewee is the content here and the presence of host (and all the extra information) forces the focus of the piece to blur. Is it essential to credit the producers twice within a 90-second piece (which, incidentally is more often than the interviewee himself is identified)? Save credits and introduction for the local hosts at stations that license this piece. This will have the added benefit of making the piece more useful to stations.
* Consider mixing several of these together. As soon as I heard this guy, I wondered what the other cider stand visitors had to say. It isn't a fair pay-off to expect me to tune tomorrow or whenever the next segment airs. The interviewee's response is really interesting and got my attention--why not roll with it and feature a few more? If time is a concern, gang several shorter responses together.