Talking to and for whom?: Orienting to the audience in Indonesian broadcast interviews

As a genre of institutional talk, broadcast interviews require interviewers and interviewees to design their talk for an overhearing audience. Based on data from Indonesian broadcast interviews, this study explores the tension that arises between adhering to this institutional norm and simultaneously addressing one another. Focusing on references to person deployed within a story told by an interviewee depicting two figures in conflict, the analysis demonstrates how both co-participants and the audience construe the storytelling as a departure from this norm. Co-participants' responses to the telling—including laughter, gaze aversion, elaborate postural shifts, participation in story reenactments and engagement in mutual blame—suggest that they treat the responsibility for maintaining the norm as a matter of mutual accountability rather than one attributable solely to interviewers, who are institutionally tasked with managing the interview process.