@flstyle said:
Getting night shows right
- Limit the Dave Lang, John Drake, Eric Pope, Johnny V, Justin McElroy crew to 1 bumper segment and have no-one else with them. Whoever may get put on this segment will not get a word in, so just have your fun, let them shout about whatever they need to shout about and leave it at that.
- For a regular segment, regardless of whether you want to use Giant Bomb staff or not, do not have any more than 6 people in one segment (including the host Jeff). The more Giant Bomb staff you have, the less guests you can have. So make your choice - 3 staff and 3 guests, 2 staff and 4 guests or just Jeff and 5 guests each segment. Patrick, Brad and Alex take too much talking time away from guests.
- Shorten the segments. 30-45 minutes tops per segment. If you want 50 guests+ for the 3 nights you can't afford to have 3 segments, each an hour long, and call it a night. It's not going to work.
- More diversity. An obvious one that doesn't need going into too much detail.
I disagree with pretty much every point here.
1. Lang et al. make for a great segment when they are together, yes, but I think excluding all of these people from all other segments is a bad idea. Drake, for example, made a great filler guest during a different segment (maybe night two? I don't remember exactly where, just that he showed up a second time without any of the other "regulars"), and he definitely did not take over the conversation. I found the scheduling where these dudes were concerned to be great this year.
I disagree with you and do think they should be limited to 1 at a time if mixed with other guests or multiple if mixed with only these type of guests. So a panel with dave, justin, jonny v all together is fine. A panel with 2 of them and yoshida does not work at all.
2.Though I agree that the guest number should be limited per segment, six including the host seems low, though I think there is value in limiting it to six without including the host. In addition to participating, Jeff (assuming he is the host every year, which I will do) guides and mediates the conversation, and thus he really cannot be counted simply as "staff" when looking at guest count. Sure Patrick, Brad, and Alex do help to guide and mediate to some extent, but ultimately Jeff is running the show.
6 seems like way too many for me. I agree with the smaller panels breed better conversation and Jeff can more easily manage the discussion.
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