Regular people who have time to stand outside of a television studio holding a sign do not have anything interesting to say.

While that might be too general of a statement, I challenge anyone to find a single instance where a TV show host interviewed one of these sign-waving yahoos and something compelling resulted.

Let’s take the “Today” show (by far the worst offender) as an example.

Usually, Al Roker will venture outside to interview a group of people from some woebegone town who are inevitably wearing hand-printed matching T-shirts and/or poorly made matching hats.

These probably kind, but in no way entertaining, country folk will then share their reason for getting up at 4 a.m. to stake out a prime spot in front of the camera.

“It was grandma’s birthday” or “we always wanted to meet Matt Lauer” is the inevitable, completely uninteresting answer.

Nothing compelling or funny has happened (which does not stop the host from laughing) and the “Today” show has kept alive the idea that yokels should appear on TV for no reason.

This apparently keeps the dream of someday standing near Al Roker and saying nothing of interest alive for other yokels, which somehow overrides just how much time these segments waste.

While this phenomenon of putting people from the audience on air was largely popularized by “Today,” the disease has spread to other shows.

Now, all the nightly entertainment/tabloid programs have segments where viewers on cheap Web cams ask questions to various celebrities.

It’s hard to imagine that the public can ask dumber questions than Mario Lopez, but at least Lopez has a team of writers behind him.

The viewer-submitted questions are like the softball questions at the beginning of the “Parade” newspaper supplement.

“Hey Tom Cruise, how did you get to be so great?” or the even more probing, “Tell us what it was like to work with Julia Roberts.”

It’s hard to imagine that anything could make “Extra,” “Access Hollywood” and “Entertainment Tonight” even less hard-hitting, but compared to the viewer submitted questions, Maria Menounos is Woodward and Bernstein rolled into one mini-skirt.

Regular people don’t have TV shows because regular people aren’t interesting.

We want professionals (even ones hired primarily for their abs like Lopez) to ask the questions because we should want to see the interview subjects be probed a little harder than the fan club drivel that the audience questions always are.

The Internet and emerging technologies like Twitter, Web cams and phones with cameras have made it possible for everyone to have their say on everything.

Possible, though, does not mean necessary and it’s time for viewer participation to go away.
I don’t want to feel like I can be part of the show.

I want to feel like the producers of the show have some interest in entertaining me or informing me.

The “Today” show window and entertainment program Web cam interviewers are gimmicks that add nothing to their respective programs.

Let the people in matching T-shirts with crudely-printed slogans on them send grandpa a postcard to celebrate his birthday.

The rest of the nation does not need to participate.

Daniel B. Kline’s work appears in over 100 papers weekly.
He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com or befriend him at facebook.com/dankline.