Pardon the Interruption: The Eccentric Reflection of Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon

The top­ic of my select­ed pod­cast was sports relat­ed. Par­don the Inter­rup­tion is a tele­vi­sion show air­ing night­ly each week­day at 5:30 p.m. East­ern Time on ESPN. Host­ed by Tony Korn­heis­er and Michael Wilbon, “PTI” has pro­duced over 3,000 episodes. In the absence of their pres­ence a vari­ety of sports jour­nal­ists have been known to sub­sti­tute in. Each episode is uploaded to ESPNRadio.com to be viewed as a podcast.

Par­don the Inter­rup­tion is divid­ed into mul­ti­ple seg­ments, the first of which is termed as Introductions/Headlines. Dur­ing this intro­duc­to­ry seg­ment the duo voice their opin­ions regard­ing that day’s top sto­ries in sports. For each top­ic Korn­heis­er and Wilbon are giv­en typ­i­cal­ly 90 sec­onds or less to express their points of view. A buzzer will ring when time has elapsed, although the two are allowed to momen­tar­i­ly extend beyond its constraint.

The sec­ond seg­ment, Five Good Min­utes, con­sists of an inter­view with a fig­ure in sports, be it an ath­lete, coach, VIP, or fel­low jour­nal­ist. Korn­heis­er and Wilbon will explore their sub­ject through the form of ques­tion­ing and debate. The third par­ty is rarely present in an ESPN Stu­dio but instead brought in via videoconference.

Seg­ment 3 can go a num­ber of ways. The two use a vari­ety of meth­ods includ­ing Mail Time, Odds Mak­ers, Role Play, or Over Under to dis­cuss dif­fer­ent sports themed top­ics. Each method will typ­i­cal­ly be uti­lized once per week.

The final seg­ment of Par­don the Inter­rup­tion goes by the name of Hap­py Time. The fourth seg­ment con­sists of the duo send­ing out birth­day wish­es, hap­py anniver­saries, or “hap­py trails” to fig­ures in sports. A final run­down titled The Big Fin­ish con­cludes the broadcast.

On tele­vi­sion the seg­ments are sep­a­rat­ed from each oth­er by means of com­mer­cials. On a pod­cast com­mer­cial time is sig­nif­i­cant­ly lessoned to the point in which it is almost nonex­is­tent. On July 12, 2013 Korn­heis­er and Wilbon were guests at the White House, meet­ing with Pres­i­dent Oba­ma in the Oval Office.

The pod­cast is large­ly engag­ing. The per­son­al­i­ties of Korn­heis­er and Wilbon could be best described as eccen­tric. The two flow togeth­er phe­nom­e­nal­ly, more than a decade of expe­ri­ence togeth­er is eas­i­ly appar­ent. I per­son­al­ly lis­tened to the pod­cast on my lap­top but it could be eas­i­ly avail­able for down­load on one’s phone using the ESPN Radio App.

While the tele­vi­sion pro­gram uses 30 min­utes of air­time the online pod­cast runs around 20 min­utes due to the absence of com­mer­cial adver­tise­ments. The pro­duc­tion bor­ders upon being flaw­less, sup­port­ed heav­i­ly by the fact the show has been aired dur­ing prime news hour on ESPN for over a decade.

The web­site in which the pod­cast is avail­able for down­load dis­plays the tele­vi­sion show’s logo below a pic­ture of Korn­heis­er and Wilbon. One is not able to com­ment on the pod­cast as the option to is not given.

I would def­i­nite­ly lis­ten to the pod­cast again. I would­n’t lis­ten to the same episode obvi­ous­ly but would sub­scribe to the pod­cast if I did not have a tele­vi­sion and had 20 min­utes avail­able in my day to tune in. I list­ed to yes­ter­day’s broad­cast (Fri­day) this morn­ing (Sat­ur­day) on my couch along­side my dog, who also hap­pens to be my best friend.

Pod­casts are a cre­ative way to broad­cast infor­ma­tion but they are quite frankly out­dat­ed. My two cents do not make a dol­lar but it is very dif­fi­cult to sit down and lis­ten to a pre­re­cord­ed dis­play of some­one talk­ing for an extend­ed peri­od of time. As a jour­nal­ist it would not be my first choice to inform the pub­lic by means of a pod­cast. If it was nec­es­sary for the pro­gres­sion of my career I would have no prob­lem doing it. A pod­cast would prob­a­bly be enjoy­able to pro­duce, yet it’s hard to imag­ine one being over­ly suc­cess­ful be it from a finan­cial or rat­ings ori­ent­ed perspective.