There have been three periods in the history of post-war broadcast interviewing. The first, 'the age of respect', when it was an honour to have you, the interviewee, on the programme, lasted until the middle 50s. The second, 'the age of supremacy', when politicians in particular looked upon the interviewers as rivals who made them feel uncomfortable by their knowledge and rigour of questioning, came to an end at the beginning of this decade. Now we are in 'the age of evasion', when most prominent interviewees have acquired the art of seeming to answer a question whilst bypassing its essential thrust. Why should this be? From the complexity of causes responsible for the present commonplace interview form, a few are worth singling out, such as the revolt against rationality and the worship of feeling in its place. To the young of the 60s, the painstaking search for understanding of a given political problem may have appeared less fruitful and satisfying than the free expression of emotion which the same problem generated. Sooner or later, broadcasting was bound to reflect this. This bias against understanding has continued. To this we must add the professional causes that have played their part. The convention of the broadcast interview had undergone little change or radical development since its rise in the 50s. When a broadcasting form. ceases to develop, its practitioners tend to take it for granted and are likely to say 'how' rather than ask 'why'. Furthermore, these partly psychological, partly professional tendencies were greatly accelerated by the huge expansion of news and current affairs output over the last 15 years. When you had many, additional hours of current affairs broadcasting, interviewing turned out to be a far cheaper convention than straight reporting, which is costly in terms of permanent reporters and time preparation. The temptation to combine an expanded news and current affairs service with a relatively small additional financial expense by making the interview happen everywhere proved overwhelming. To be fair, there are compensating virtues in interviewing, such as immediacy and authority, yet in all honesty I must say that the spread of the interviewing arrangement has led to a corresponding diminution of quality broadcasting. According to the author, in the past politicians thought that television interviewers ______.