Sunday, August 07, 2005

Excerpt from My Chappell Interview, Experiment with Audioblogger

I'm trying out audioblogger to post an excerpt from my interview with Greg Chappell I did for my radio station. I've used the raw audio here. The answer to my last question might have gotten chopped off because of the time limit (5 minutes is all audioblogger will allow with an option to extend once you've finished posting the first 5 minutes).

Although I cannot post the entire interview (close to 45 minutes), I might post more excerpts if this has come across all right. Please let me know. The audio quality is not great when I hear it from this post (plus I hate hearing my own voice).

The beginning of the first sentence sounds garbled. It starts out like this: "The word 'great' is used in every sentence introducing Greg Chappell. And why not?"

And of course, this is copyrighted and stuff, so all the implications follow.


this is an audio post - click to play

Update: I've added a few more minutes of audio below. One of the questions (and answer) I've edited out of this post deals with his thoughts on the Indian team's prospects in Sri Lanka. In his answer, he mentions the practice matches the team went through in Bangalore before they left. So the last question in this series of posts picks up on practice matches, unstructured play and their importance.

this is an audio post - click to play


this is an audio post - click to play

17 comments:

saurav said...

nice work....though i have no interest in cricket....
take care.....
happy friendship day...

Anonymous said...

I am not into cricket that much either.
I am sure there are a lot of people who will be excited about this.
The audio has come out fine, I could hear it without any problem.
Nice work Sujatha.....

Sourin Rao said...

Suj
Checked out the audiophile. Good questions, but if you dont mind my observation that you were keen for Chappel to finish his answer and then moveon to the next question. Maybe its just me, but a honest opinion.But very good otherwise.
Sourin

Sujatha Bagal said...

Wanderer: Thanks for stopping by and for leaving a comment...

Rajeshwari: Thanks!

Sourin: Absolutely welcome your opinion! But did you mean I should stop for him to finish his answer or that I was stopping but should not? Would appreciate you letting me know! And thanks for checking it out.

Sujatha Bagal said...

And happy friendship day as well.:)

Sourin Rao said...

Suj
You would not stop him, but the way you would begin the next question ending his response with the peffunctory "Thats Good" and then hastened to the next questions. Seemed like you wanted to rush thru the interview without much follow up to his responses. Maybe it was not like that for the rest of the interview, but it seemed so from the first 2 questions and responses.
Sourin

Sujatha Bagal said...

Thanks for that Sourin. Yes, the follow-ups came later when we were talking about his coaching style and the team. Initially we were not sure how much time he had.

Anonymous said...

I was wondering how you found him as a person. We see him as a player, commentator, coach, and through the eyes of the media. How was your interaction?

And your final comment on unstructured coaching helping other fields and a note to parents and teachers was very reminiscent of AIR hosts. Nice!

Sujatha Bagal said...

b: He was very cordial and nice to talk to as a person. In fact, before the interview started, we were chatting about expat life in Bangalore and what we miss about our respective homes. As I mentioned in an earlier comment, initially we were not sure if he would be rushed for time or if he had the inclination to sit and talk. We found out quickly that he was relaxed and from then on, I asked my question and stepped out of the way and he talked (I cannot stand to see or hear interviews where the interviewer keeps jumping in and not letting the interviewee talk - e.g., Charlie Rose). Some of his answers went on for 4 minutes!

He has very clear ideas about his coaching methods and he put them across very nicely. I was particularly interested in the "unstructured play" concept because of the rigid structure in the school systems and how much we put our kids in highly structured environments these days. I mean, kids go to school, bring back tons of homework, go to music classes, soccer classes, math classes (as early as 5!), then there are the play groups. Hence my comment about the teachers and parents.

The later parts of the interview were about his vegetarian/vegan diet and his ganesha idol which he and his wife have installed at home. Most of the listeners were floored by that (and he practises yoga too!) and the way he kept describing his coaching job here as an honor. Definitely not too full of himself.

Thanks for visiting and commenting.

Rhapsoder said...

Suj..

thanks for the post..

Manu

FSN 3.0 said...

Hi Suj,

Great post .Thanks for letting me know.It would be great if you could write more about your work as a Radio Jockey, about the people you meet, how you prepare for the interviews and other segments that you present.I have always been kind of curious about what goes on behind the scenes.

Do you try to ask whatever YOU want to ask, or do you compile a list of questions that you think people would like to have asked - how does it work?

It would be great if you could give us some more clips - not just on Greg Chappell, but just about anybody else.

Thanks a lot.

FSN 3.0 said...

OOPS - wrote this comment before I saw the one you posted about your day as a Radio Jockey.

It sounds a little like what we see on Frasier.

I'd still like to know about the interviews, though.

Sujatha Bagal said...

fierysinews: Thanks for your comments.

In terms of the interviews, I research the person I am interviewing. The newspapers and the internet are great resources. Then I write the questions that I want to know the answers to. For example, from his website, chappellway.com, I found out Chappell had done a lot of research on what makes champions. So I asked him about that. I shared the list of questions with V, my husband for the listener point-of-view and with my programme executives at the station. They had a couple of interesting suggestions for questions as well.

Typically, it's a combination of both: the things I want answered as well as things I think my listeners will be interested in finding out (even though I know the answers to them from my research, for e.g., how he became a vegan, why he has a ganesha idol in his house).

As I am interviewing, I go down the list of questions and check them off as I go. If something interesting catches my attention and I want to explore it further, then I deviate from my list. I have to watch the deviations thought because of time constraints on the part of the interviewee.

I also do live interviews on my show. For example, a few weeks ago, the discussion on my show was blogging. So I put 4 bloggers from Bangalore on air and talked to them live. This is a little bit more casual. The topics here don't need too much prepartion.

An interest in the topic certainly helps because your natural curiosity comes into play.

Anyway, all this is definitely not rocket science. :)

FSN 3.0 said...

Sounds more exciting than playing around with rocket propellants.

:-)

Have you watched Frasier? How much like that, is the real thing?

Also, all those years in D.C dont seem to have changed your accent.

I thought you'd habeen talkin ebonics by now.

Do you take live callers on your show?

I know I'm asking a lot of questions - but that's one field that I really like :-)

Sujatha Bagal said...

Fierysinews: Well, Frasier has Roz helping him, screening callers, etc. We don't have anyone in the studios with us. Also, his show is about one topic and it's talk radio, whereas my shows are mainly about music and the topics vary widely. We do take live callers. Adds to the fun and spontaneity of the shows.

About the accent, a lot of people are surprised that I've lived there for so long but don't have an American accent. They say they know of people who've gone for a couple of weeks on vacation and have come back with accents.:)

FSN 3.0 said...

Hehe...it all depends on how you see things.I'm one of those people always accused of 'putting on an accent', however the Americans feel that 'I dont have an accent' :-)

However, you speak very very clearly - and slowly that I suppose people dont have any problems understanding you.

Me on the other hand...I always feel comfortable when my accent (and I'm good at changing it - call me a vocal chameleon) matches that of the person talking to me.

I have only lived here for 3 years, and already I'm saying "What's that?", "Are you for real?" etc etc.

In Frasier, Roz is supposedly the producer, so I assumed that's what producers do, in a radio show.

Do you have a producer, and if so - how does that person's role differ, if at all, from that of Roz's..

Sujatha Bagal said...

We do have a production executive, but he does not have a role in the studio when we're doing our shows. He is a sounding board for the content of the shows, the guests, etc. And he's the boss guy, not part of a team, as Roz is.