Sharing the idea, so someone who can use it might do so. I’d do this show.
Show name: “Answer the Question”
Show format: The interviewer has a set of questions for a guest. The difference from what's normal is, there’s a green light, that only gets lit by the interviewer if the guest answers the question.
We all know it’s standard practice in PR today for guests to say gobbledygook to questions they don’t want to answer, until the interviewer feeling the time pressure moves on. They get away with it.
Instead, the whole show will stay on the first question if needed — no moving on until the interviewer is satisfied the question was answered.
When the question is answered, the light is lit, and the interviewer goes on to the next question.
Watching someone squirm and stall and not answer a question over and over can be more informative and damaging for them than how it’s done now.
I think viewers would have a tolerance for this and find it more informative than the current format which tends to frequently have poor questions and non-answers.
Why would politicians do the show? I think some are willing to answer questions, and would have a chance to look good; and others are deluded into thinking they can defeat the format.
I’m talking about the interviewing style closer to Maddow’s below — respectful, let the guest talk, more than Chris Matthews’ rude constant interrupting and talking over. But with accountability.
Credit for some of the inspiration to the Rachel Maddow interview of Rand Paul — her last interview of him IIUC — where she spent the entire segment on the question because he wouldn’t answer.
She was asking him to confirm he would vote against the part of the Civil Rights Act prohibiting private businesses from segregating.
Paul tried to dodge by praising the parts of the bill that limited government segregation, by saying he personally was against segregation and wouldn’t join a club that does it, and called the question an academic topic with no relevance, an obscure red herring from 1964, and accused Maddow of using it as a political attack for his opponent — but she kept on him.