[dagw]

It’s only when you go well past the hour mark that you start to get the unscripted stuff that you wouldn’t normally hear without getting to know the person.

You see, for me this is almost always the stuff I don't care about. It almost always ends up either rambling personal anecdotes and the two of them sharing 'funny' stories or two people pontificating on subjects way outside their areas of expertise. Both of which are completely uninteresting to me.

Two blokes chatting bollocks about stuff they don't really understand is only fun if I'm one of them.

[ghaff]

As an interviewee, I'm going to be exhausted after an hour on mic and talking about whatever random things come to mind--which are probably mostly random digressions that aren't very interesting. I have been taped for longer than that--with a break or two--but with the intent that the footage was going to be heavily edited.

I'm not even in the efficiency "play it at 2x" camp. But I pretty much have zero interest in hearing two or more people randomly ramble on. The fact that NPR/NPR-like podcasts and radio shows tend to have segments on even 1 hour shows probably says something about what pros find works best.

(I'm also a fan of shorter conference presentations although at large conferences, I appreciate that there are logistical issues associated with moving people between rooms too frequently.)