Long-Form Interviews Make Comeback as Hannity, MSNBC Adopt a Drop-Everything Format

One aspect of modern cable news — an aspect broadcast traditionalists tend to lament — is the death of the long-form television interview. In a world of 140-characters and fast-food soundbites, the death is hardly surprising.

Before diving in with the defibrillator, a quick tutorial on format: Your standard hour-long cable news program is sliced up into six blocks (A-F). The A block is always the longest and obviously most important/potentially compelling, and in this election season that usually means where a host or producer puts its major candidate to kick off a show. Depending on the candidate (Trump, Clinton), that interview may extend into the shorter B block, but that’s usually it.

When going down this road, the time for multiple follow-up questions when warranted (and they almost always are) and deeper dives into topics and scenarios is still frustratingly limited. And oftentimes when the discussion is over, very little is gleaned outside of a biting soundbite (Trump) or awkward denial (Clinton).

But what if a program said, “You know what? Screw it. I’m giving a candidate 30 minutes or even one hour to really cover a huge array of topics and allow time for the interview to become an actual, pointed, real conversation.” Truth be told, we saw this very thought process come to fruition on Fox early in this certifiable campaign season via Sean Hannity, who became a go-to-guy for almost every GOP candidate who announced their intention to run for president and wanted to reach a primarily-conservative television audience. In each case, Hannity and his producers dropped entire standard rundowns for a full hour discussion (minus commercials) with whomever announced that day, that week. And given the event ratings we’ve seen throughout this campaign that mostly dwarf those posted last year at this time, it only makes sense Hannity is bringing said format back to FNC again with 30 minutes each with Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz before a live audience in South Carolina tonight at 10:00 PM EST. The show then moves to Vegas on Monday for a full hour featuring Trump, also before a live audience (which — as late-night talk shows always illustrate — always adds juice). The host made the announcement on the bookings and format on his syndicated radio talk show this afternoon.

And this obviously isn’t a trend exclusive to Hannity: MSNBC went the full-hour interview route this week several times alone via a 60-minute sit-down with John Kasich (Hardball with Chris Matthews, Wednesday), followed by a one-hour Town Hall relatively arranged at the last minute with Trump immediately afterward, and Rachel Maddow’s Q&A with Vice President Biden for nearly a full hour on Thursday. All performed moderately to considerably higher ratings-wise than standard-format programming usually offered at those times on the network.

Of course, it’s not exactly Howard Stern‘s Sirius XM radio show, where the host has sometimes gone two hours without commercial interruption when interviewing a big guest. And there’s nobody better, not even close… because Howard has this unmatched ability to compel a guest to open up and reveal things you’ve never heard before or remotely expected was coming. One of the reasons Stern can induce raw candor out of even the most guarded guest (at first) is by not constantly rushing things along because either a break is coming up or the interview is abruptly coming to an end due to time restraints in an effort to get to other topics and guests. Listen to Howard’s interviews with John Cusack, Lady Gaga, or Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins) sometime on YouTube. It’s a freaking clinic, and that’s because it’s no longer an interview, it’s a real conversation that needs time to really develop.

Trump with Joe & Mika. Trump with Anderson. Trump with Hannity. Not for 11 minutes, not for 16, but a full hour. Some in the bubble say they’re sick of seeing and listening to him, especially for that long. Some feel the same way about Ted, Marco, Hillary and Bernie…

But the numbers say otherwise.

Six blocks with six different topics are out.

The long-form interview makes a comeback… at least until November 9th rolls around.

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Follow Joe Concha on Twitter @JoeConchaTV

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.