Argh, media appearance madness

[dianeduane]

So I'm minding my own business Thursday morning when the phone rings. On the other end is a nice lady from a production company connected with RTÉ, the Irish national broadcaster. Somehow or other, she's gotten hold of my name, and she wants to know if I'm interested in appearing on a TV show called "The Big Bite". This is an afternoon current affairs and discussion program featuring a journalist-presenter and usually four guests who sit around discussing some interesting topic, normally -- but not always -- something that won't get too rancorous in mid-afternoon, just before the cooking and casual chat show that follows.

It turns out that Monday's topic is whether or not there's likely to be life on other worlds, and they thought it would be fun to have me on the show. The other guests are a professor of astrophysics from University College Dublin, Dave Moore from Astronomy Ireland, and someone else whose name I forget at the moment. Either way, it sounds like the opinions of the group are going to be heavily weighted towards the "yes" side.

So that'll be enjoyable. Meanwhile, I go into the usual pre-appearance craziness. What time will the car from the studio get here? (Always too late.) Will the driver get lost? (Yes, even though I e-mailed them an extremely clear and straightforward map.) I need a haircut. (Thank heaven the hairdresser has time to take me today.) I have nothing to wear. (Well, yes, I do. For something like this, jeans and a silk sweater and an Hèrmés scarf -- no, make that the shawl with the sun, moon, and stars on it -- will do just fine.) And so on, and so on...

Oh, well. Everything will sort itself out. And it'll be fun to get up to RTÉ again; I haven't been up there for a couple of years.

Tags: Radio Telefís Eireann, RTÉ, the big bite, TV, television, appearance, Diane Duane, science fiction

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Comments

[inklesspen.livejournal.com]

Hurrah! I don't suppose you'd know if there's any way us Murricans could eventually see it? According to the website, RTE won't sell tapes to individual people.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

If NTL are carrying RTE at the moment (they didn't and then did and I haven't checked what they are doing now) I'll be recording it on my TiVo (in the UK), so theoretically I could write it to DVD. I'd probably have to transcode it to NTSC format (assuming that US DVD players can't handle PAL DVDs), which takes typically a day or so for a 30 minute program...

[inklesspen.livejournal.com]

It's not so much that US DVD players can't handle PAL (one of ours can, one of ours can't), it's that US TVs can't handle PAL. But those of us who are playing the DVDs on the computer can use PAL dvds. That's how I watched Ultraviolet, after all.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

OK, I'll see if I can get it (I'm in England, we can't get RTE directly but sometimes the cable carries it), and if I can record it I'll see what I can do about a DVD. PAL format is easy, transcoding to NTSC is very CPU intensive. (This is assuming that D. doesn't object, of course!)

[irishkate.livejournal.com]

See, I could tape it for you but then you'd have to have a tape machine that could play PAL...(assuming I remember to tape it for me to actually see while I'm at work!)

[janeway216.livejournal.com]

Well, at least this appearance ought to be flattering -- several years ago, one of our local news stations sent a crew to cover the National Junior Honor Society induction at my middle school (must've been a very slow news day!) I watched that night to see if anyone I knew was on and was rather shocked to see a long shot of me lighting my NJHS candle from the rear opening the story!

The dress, I concluded, was nice, but the hair had been a little unfortunate . . .