SIXTEEN PEOPLE

A guy on a Saturday morning political show is telling the audience what he's thankful for.He lists the names of the people on his staff who assist in putting the content of the show together. There are at least sixteen of them.

So for an hour long show on a Saturday morning that has guests gathered around a table with a basket of fruit in the middle and pastries on the side, it takes sixteen people to provide content. Sixteen assistants contributing their research and writing for a show that  airs only one hour a week on a Saturday morning. Take into account the commercials, and the host doesn't have much air time at all.

Why does it take that many people to put together a one hour talk show that isn't even that long if you consider the commercials? if there are four guests, they each get time to answer a question. An entire segment can take up just two questions. That means two segments out of four have to involve the guests and their comments. That gives the host even less to say or have to prepare for.

Talk show hosts on radio don't have a staff of sixteen people providing content for them but television for some reason is different. Television needs a lot of people to put something simple on the air for a short amount of time. A staff of writers and researchers. Most radio hosts, talk or otherwise, do it all themselves. Most of their shows are four hours long. They have no trouble coming up with something to say or an opinion to express. They don't need sixteen people to help them do it.

If I had to do a one hour television show once a week I wouldn't need input from sixteen people to make it happen. If I had guests on the show it would be even easier.

I wouldn't know what to do with a staff of sixteen people. I'd have to manage them and deal with their personalities. That seems like a lot more work to me than simply going in and blowing off steam for twenty minutes.