Hugo Chavez Latest TV Show Was Shorter: 5 Hours and 32 Minutes

Venezuela is one of those countries where the President every week addresses a speech to the population through his TV and radio program "Aló presidente". It is known when the program starts: every Sunday at 11 am. But the end is always a mystery. The last one, lasted 5 hours and 32 minutes. You can think it is lot of time, but it is not an extraordinary duration for Mr Hugo Chavez. In fact, the average lenght of his programs is 6 hours.

It is true that "Aló presidente" it is not a classic speech, because Hugo Chavez can interview somebody or answer people's questions. By all means, President of Venezuela is almost all of the time talking on the screen. If you compare, for instance, with the last Weekly Address of President of the United States we could say that Mr Obama speech is a brief: 4 minutes, 25 seconds.

Regarding these "two situations" I wander if there is any rule about the length of the speeches. This question, as many others, can be answered by common sense. It is clear that if the speaker has lots of interesting things to say, is eloquent and skilled public orator can take more minutes. It depends on the environment as well (it is different to be in an auditorium, to talk on the TV…) and on the purpose of the speech of course. As I told, common sense. But it seems pretty clear that six hours of whoever talking about whatever is too much.

Just in case somebody doesn't trust his common sense, I've been looking for what scholars say about the length of the speeches. In short, according to the experts the ideal length is 20 minutes. A really short speech could seem unsubstantial. And more than twenty minutes can be boring, and to bore people is a deadly sin.

Unless your aim were to be a record man. Then you cant talk as much as you want and you can. Although, I must warn you that it will be not easy to break a record. One of the politicians who has been talking more without a pause is Cuban President Fidel Castro. He delivered the longest speech ever at the United Nations: 4 hours and 29 minutes in 1960. But was without the narrow customs of UN when Fidel Castro gave his longest explanation: 7 hours and 10 minutes at the III Communist Party Congress in Havana.

But if your aim is to be the only, the really number one never ending speaker, you will have to beat a man from Perpinyà (south of France or Catalunya North). To defense the catalan culture, he broke the Record Guiness of the longest speech by talking for 124 hours about Salvador Dali and FC Barcelona amongst other topics. Lluís Colet was talking five days without stop. Wow!