What can radio offer people that TV cannot?
Radio is really, really intimate in away that is hard for TV. A really good TV show will have moments where your heart goes out to the people, but it’s rare, and it’s hard to pull off. On the radio if we just have somebody talking about something in a heartfelt way, there is something about the emotion that just gets to you. The other thing is, when you don’t see the person, you don’t write them off. When I was doing gang stories, I thought it was a real advantage that the teenagers in the story couldn’t be seen. A girl gang member – black lipstick, baggy clothes – they’d just think she’s a punk, whereas when she starts talking, she’s really smart and funny. You don’t have to get around the way she looks to love her a little bit. Every intern we have could make a tape that is really, really beautiful and moving, which would be hard to do in print where you have to be a really skilled writer to pull it off. And this would be hard to do in film just because there is so much about making
