Think of The Oprah Winfrey Show. Throw that talk show format into a blender. Add some cheap beer – preferably Busch Light – a dash of testosterone and a bit of Red Bull to make sure the alcohol doesn’t start working too quickly (you’ve got a long night of drinking ahead of you).

Besides, this isn’t the kind of drink you pour into a glass with a salt-jeweled rim. It’s Primetime Pregame – NU Channel 1’s alcoholic version of Oprah – now in its second season. Hosted by Weinberg senior Dan Kramer and Communication senior Mike Placito, the show features both campus celebrities and the random kid sitting in the back of your anthropology class. Kramer sat down with PLAY to talk about how he got on TV doing what most college students do anyway on Friday nights.

PLAY: How did you get the idea for the show?

Dan Kramer: Mike (Placito) and I lived together freshman year, and we never really ran out of things to talk about. We’ve done a lot of projects together that we’ve sort of just made up. So we were talking about programming and he was like, “Hey, let’s do a show together.” That’s how it started – us getting wasted and talking.

PLAY: How do you pick the people you talk to?

DK: It started out just as any of our friends who were around. That was sort of the first show or so, but then we realized that some people probably had things to promote. We just started getting interesting people who had things coming up that we wanted to talk about. It sort of turned into a promotional thing – like, promote whatever you’ve got going on. In the beginning we had Tulane (University) kids on.

PLAY: So is the whole basis of the show getting drunk? Or is it more than just that?

DK: No. The whole basis of the show is pretty much us getting drunk and having guests on so it’s not just us talking.

PLAY: You’ve had some pretty interesting guests – ASG President Patrick Keenan-Devlin and The Daily columnist Henry M. Bowles III. Any standouts?

DK: Yeah. At the end of our season last year we had a live power hour where we invited back all of our best guests of that season. Patrick was a great guest. Henry was a great guest. (Medill senior) Andrew Bentley was a great guest. And it has nothing to do with what they’re doing or what’s going on – it has much more to do with how receptive they are to the show, because it’s so low pressure. We don’t really talk about anything.

PLAY: Patrick’s ASG president. What kind of stuff did you talk about with him? I don’t know if he drinks or not, but he wasn’t drinking on the show.

DK: Yeah. In fact, we try not to – well, no, we don’t let our guests drink. And we have to be careful if they’re not 21; obviously they can’t drink, then. But we usually bring up whatever it is they’re doing – like with Patrick – and have them talk about it. People are always worried (about being a guest) who don’t know the show – Henry was worried about coming on. But we were just like, “We’re not going to really talk about (you being a columnist for The Daily). Feel free to talk about it. We’ll ask you a little bit and that’s how we’ll introduce you.” But our conversations span to anything. When we had (A&O President and Communication senior) Peter Kahn on we talked about Kanye for a little bit, but then it just got into Dillo Day programming, which has nothing to do with that. It’s whatever we think of and feel like talking about.

PLAY: Do you prepare at all?

DK: No. Not even close. There are times when we are getting our guests ten minutes before we shoot.

PLAY: So it’s just you and Mike who put together the show?

DK: Yeah. Well, we have our “crew” – (Communication sophomore) Sarah Hayden and some other people who are just always there.

PLAY: How’d you get it on Channel 1? You guys just drink – that’s not the usual Channel 1 programming.

DK: Oh, yeah. The premise is: We drink. That’s it. How’d we get it on? Mike is the head of Channel 1 and they needed programming, so it wasn’t that hard for him to put it into the places where things get OK’d.

PLAY: It’s on every night, isn’t it?

DK: Yeah – every night at 8 and 11. For a while our planning was so poor that we would get people on who were promoting things that’d already happened. Now we try to do it the week before and time it up in a way that makes sense. For instance, this week we’re doing DM and we’re trying to get Mee-Ow on also, so that should be cool.