Blog Assignment 2: The State of Things

I was extremely excited to listen Frank Stasio on 'The State of Things' because a good friend of my has been interning with them for the past year.

Radio blog show are very new to me I have never been a fan of NPR or anything of that sort so this was a very interesting experience.

The State of Things was very interesting to listen to. I choose to listen to the "Searching for Spirituality in Prison" show. Stasio visited the Raleigh Correctional Facility in Raleigh. The women in prison were given a project to write their spiritual autobiography for a program called Project Turn. The goal of Project Turn is to help prisoners with academics and spirituality. I
enjoyed the reading from the prisoners memoirs of spirituality (I felt more of a connection with the topic of the blog show).

I thought the show had a great topic. I think that is very key to blog talk radio, because you do need anyone (as you would a talk show) so it is very important to keep you audience engaged.
At first I was bothering my the distractions of the prison in the background (ie. the phone ringing and the constant intercom announcements). After I keep hearing it I actually began to like it I felt that it gave the show character and made me feel as if I was sitting in the prison listening to the show face to face.

As far as the host goes I think Stasio was excellent. He was very prepared as far as who/how to introduce his guest and what questions he was going to ask them. I think in blog talk radio it is important to keep the show going, you never want to have a silent moment. I feel like too much silence would have lost me. I was also glad to hear Stasio ask real questions. I feel often times we are hoping the hosts ask certain questions because we really want to know the answers. I think answering the questions that the audience would want to ask is great, especially since they cannot call in, great risk taker!

I also liked that at time there was a break or transition in the show Stasio 1) had good/calming background music and he introduced the topic each time and who was speaking so we would not get lost in the show.