Originally Posted by
Mal
I get your perspective, but tend to agree with JNORT's take on this one in most situations. "You're welcome" has a tendency to flip the power dynamic between the listener (who just thanked someone) and the speaker. It implies that the sense of being welcome, or the ability to feel at ease and not indebted for what was just delivered, is within the power of the speaker to bestow upon the hearer. In your TV interviewer/interviewee situation, that is right and proper; the interviewer is thanking the interviewee for taking the time out of their busy schedule to do something they're not obligated in any way to do. So there, yes, "You're welcome" (to my time, which I voluntarily gave to you) sounds right.
However, far and away the more common interaction where "Thank you" is heard is customer/service individual. When the customer, who is supposedly in the more powerful position in that interaction, says "Thanks," it's just a courtesy and good manners. In reality, unless the employee in one of these situations goes above and beyond any normal expectation of service, the power dynamic would normally indicate that we don't need to thank them at all. But we do (why we do could be yet another separate thread), which forces a response. That response should reinforce the customer/server power dynamic, not flip it around.
"You're welcome" in a situation where, say, I just thanked someone for handing me my cup of coffee, implies that the speaker of the "You're welcome" had the power to either make me, the customer, feel welcomed to the product I just bought, or not. In reality, though, the moment the customer hands over cash or credit card or the setting (sitting down in a restaurant, for instance) implies that they will at the end of the transaction, they have all the permission they should need to feel welcomed to the product or service they're paying for.
I think a lot of people feel this subconsciously, which is why so many assiduously avoid saying "You're welcome." If spoken with the slightest unintentional curtness, or in any but a properly deferential sounding, service-oriented, sweet toned lilt, it can be taken wrong. Sometimes you'll hear a very nice waitperson say "Oh, you're very welcome!" in a cheery, deferential way that carries a subtext of "It's such a pleasure to serve you, as you're a wonderful person who deserves the best!" It's an overcompensation for the danger of being taken as either condescending or snotty for making a statement that traditionally implies that the speaker is the one in the power position. "You're welcome" if at all brusquely spoken, or with the accent on the "wel" being just a little too strong, can too easily sound like "You should be thanking me, you ungrateful s.o.b."