Challenging the audience Tavis Smiley promises to shake things up (PBS)

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/headline/entertainment/2332641

Tavis Smiley, PBS' first West Coast-based talk show, will be fast-paced and aimed at drawing a younger, more ethnically diverse audience than typically watches public television, its host said.

Smiley, whose punchy, baritone delivery and pointed questions are familiar to his growing National Public Radio audience, is ready to get back on the tube. (His radio program will continue.)

Bill Cosby, Democratic presidential contender Wesley Clark, Newt Gingrich and Magic Johnson are among the first week's scheduled guests. The series begins at 12:30 a.m. Tuesday on Channel 8.

<snip>

Recently, Smiley examined heavy opposition by black Americans to the war in Iraq.

"The reason is that black people, disproportionately, make up the Armed Forces ... so folks are concerned about those lives," he said. "It's not just what many people describe as dislike or disdain of George Bush. It's deeper."

[burrowowl]

1. Smiley is great

Seen his annual shows on C-Span

[Lugnut]

2. I like Tavis.

I'll be waatching this show.

[sally343434]

3. I'm sorry, but Smiley has turned whore

I used to think Tavis was OK. But then he started allowing his radio show on NPR to be just another platform for the likes of Gingrich and Watts. I mean, it isn't like these guys don't already have every other possible media venue at their immediate disposal to spew forth their propagandistic venom.

But no. Smiley began having them on regularly. What used to be an oasis of truth and critical talk has now become just another cog in the RW media machine.

Frankly, it was probably the fee for getting his PBS gig. Whores are all the same. Flaunt a little money (or exposure, or a TV program) in front of them, and they'll say "What principles?" faster than you can say, "Uncle Tom."

[AP]

5. I totally disagree with this. Smiley remains superficially neutral on his

NPR show, and if you go see him talk off air, he is super liberal. How can you blame him? NPR is not a home to progressivism, contrary to many people's opinions here. Smiley is like Spiderman. That movie was very subtley left wing. Millions of people went to see it. There's always room in our culture for the subtle left wing thing that millions here. Sometimes it's more important to have that than it is to have the super-liberal thing that 100 people see.

Even Smiley's superficial neutrality is a surface that is easily scratched to reveal something much more progressive, and which can be summarized as a desire to see wealth and political power spread down and out, rather than up and narrowly.

Incidentally, I have purchased more books by authors interviewed on his show than any other NPR show, and the books always turn out to be very progressive, and very informative. Also, just listen to what he talks about.

Someday, a graduate student is going to write a thesis about how left wing his show really was, and about how it had to work within the confines of an NPR which really drives towards pro-corporatism.

By the way, I still think it's good to have people like Watts and Gingrich on the air, so long as they're getting asked hard questions, or, at least, subtle, informed and informative questions, which Smiley does do.

Smiley is NO Uncle Tom.

[Cocoa]

4. I like him, but...

I don't like his show. I guess it's too "fast-paced" as that article says his TV show will be. His radio show sounds more like a commercial show to me than anything else on NPR. He's a great interviewer, but the interviews are so damn SHORT, it's like they're over before they start.

[AP]

6. Really?

I think his show is the best interview show on NPR. And it's one of the best produced.

I find the pace and the segment length an ideal ballance between getting lots of different pieces of information out and giving you enough to wrap your mind around.

I find myself discussing things (positively) that I learned on Tavis more often than any NPR show other than, perhaps, This American Life, which is a qualitatively different sort of thing.

[gorgan]

7. This American Life not an NPR show

It's produced by PRI, Public Radio International, just to set the record straight.

[AP]

8. Right. I mean, of all the shows carried by my local NPR affiliate...

...Tavis and This American Life are the two I think about and talk about the most. So they're obviously doing something right.

[AP]

9. Kick.

Perhaps this will be the media program with best coverage of election.

[shihtzu5]

10. "Shake Things Up"

And I understand his first guest is to be Bill Cosby. This is an example of "shaking things up"?

[AP]

11. No doubt, the bait to get people in and listening to Cornel West next

month.

[revcarol]

12. Check out Tavis' interview with Kucinich.

http://www.kucinich.us on the right hand side last time I looked.