1. He realizes his audience are lay people, and asks the 'average man' questions. He doesn't appear to be stupid on purpose, he's merely 'bringing it down' for the man (and woman).
Why is it that Art never had to do this? Because his audience was sharp and engaged. George has largely lost those listeners. Art asked probing, interesting, important (and topical) questions and then held his guests to a real response. Even though George has mostly lost this audience, I don't think members of his current audience would appreciate your characterization that George has to 'dumb things down' for them.
2. He knows when to STFU. It's true. The fact he never engages in conversation is to make sure the guest has the talk time. George realizes it's not about him, but the guest. This technique allows to maximize what the guest has to say.
Then why do we need George in the first place? Why not just have a program that brings in a new guest each night and lets them loose? Again, compare George to Art. Art could carry on a dynamic, on-topic, interesting conversation with just about anyone. One of Art's greatest strengths was that he brought out the best in most of his guests. Keep in mind that most of the guests who come on C2C, while they have a great interest in the topics they are there to discuss, are not professional speakers. In other words, they NEED a good host who will draw them out, who will channel the information they have into something that makes sense to listeners. Too many guests go off on tangents or get into such minutiae of detail that listeners may well become bored. A good host will reign in a guest when that needs to be done. Art did this well. Ian does it maybe too well. George Knapp, as good as he is, needs a bit of work here. George Noory is a disaster in this area. GN lets the guest speak unhindered because he doesn't pay attention and he's just trying to make it to the next break.
3. Keeps it interesting - George may respond to the guest by asking an off topic question. This is merely to deflect the current conversation into a more interesting direction
He almost never takes the conversation into a more interesting direction. He routinely interrupts interesting material with bland crap like, "Where can people find your book?" or "How did you get interested in this area?" Sure, questions like these make sense, but not when they interrupt extremely interesting stuff that the guest is speaking about. I have heard this happen over and over again.
4. Has a great sense of humor - The 'dumb' things he says are not serious at all. It's just that people who dislike George are too arrogant to identify that he's just joking. "Sand Scripts, Evil Babies, Thinking Comets" - these are all part of his 'act'. To regular people, this is very funny stuff. 'Normal' people get it.
Whatever you say... I chuckle when George says things like this, but not because it's actually humorous.
5. An excellent voice and ability to speak clearly - although from time to time, George appears to flub his words, but he does this to bring it down to the street - again, he understands his audience
I don't care an awful lot about this. I don't mind George's voice. I wouldn't even care if his diction is all messed up as long as he could conduct an interesting interview.
As Zaqir said, perhaps you are being sarcastic in your message. I guess I could see that for items # 1-3 but not so much for #4 and #5. Maybe I'm just missing something here...
