Why do interviewers on news outlets sometimes abrubtly cut off their subjects, even though nowadays video storage is abundant and editing is relatively easy? I mean you’d think they can just let their guests finish their sentence and edit the interview down to whatever time they want to spend on it right?
I was watching [this interview with Naomi Klein](https://youtu.be/NDWrHd-izFg?si=Yi4hTx9ikgocQLhv) about her book. It was quite long about 40 minutes but at the end she is still abruptly cut off mid-sentence with a quick “okay we have to leave it there”
I mean couldn’t the interviewer at some point just say some house-keeping stuff like “okay please make your closing remarks now”, and then edit out those house-keeping parts in post, and cut the interview down to whatever time length they want to allot to it?
You could say it was because it’s a smaller media company and they don’t have as many editors on staff. However I’ve seen it happen on numerous bigger outlets as well, MSNBC, CNN and other news outlets.
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Two reasons: controlling the time, as most other comments have noted, or controlling the content. That might mean keeping the conversation on track, or it might mean pivoting away from topics or shutting down responses that the broadcaster doesn’t want to promote.
Because letting someone yammer on for an unlimited amount of time is a sign of a very bad interviewer.
Lol Film isn’t the only cost. Every minute over your booking you’re paying the interviewee (if paid), you’re also looking at the production crew, satellite space rental, etc times are also often guaranteed in production staff/anchors contracts, etc. Also, you could be being told to cut them because they are veering off of what answers/footage are within production need/scope etc.
If it’s a news show interview, and the network political stance is opposite to the person they are interviewing (eg. CNN interviewing a Republican, or FoxNews interviewing a Democrat), the host often wants the interview to proceed in a particular way that supports their own talking points. So the host may cutoff the politician if they start talking too much about messaging that is opposite to what the network wants.
Most prerecorded segments have very little editing. My wife was given a segment on a local news station. They told us we had X minutes and had us write questions and the answers to those questions. We were going to do a live demonstration but we had technical difficulties, so we went back to our shop and shot a 30 second video of the equipment in action that they added as “B-roll” and that was it. There was no editing.
Wait. You think that interviews are cut short because of… storage?
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