Ep 223 How to Speak during a Live TV or Radio Interview August 10, 2016

How do you speak to the news media if it's a live interview?

Speaking the show about effective speaking in public to the media, at work and in life. Speaking with TJ Walker.

How do you speak to the news media if it's a live interview? It's live tv, live radio, live webcast. People can see you. Now, the implication, that's a common question. I get the implication, is that you should somehow treat this very differently from an edited interview. Whether it's video, audio, or a telephone interview with a text reporter. There is this idea out there that most executives, politicians, authors, experts have that they're just completely different interviews. I subscribe to the school of thought that says no, for the most part, you should treat them exactly the same. Because anything you do well in an edited interview, having a message, sticking to the message, having good sound bites, are pretty good things to do in live interviews, too. Now, the irony, of course, is most people think that live interviews are scarier, harder to do, more difficult, and that somehow it's safer, easier to do recorded interviews, edited interviews, and it's just not true. With an edited interview, you give so much more power to the reporter because you can be on message, have a great message, stick to it 100 times in three hours and say one stupid thing for two seconds. And that's the only quote that gets in the story for an edited interview. So I do believe that anytime you have a chance between live versus recorded and edited, always go for the live interview. In fact, that's why during a time of crisis, some politicians actually require, they say, I will not do an interview unless it's live. Because when it's live, you can guarantee that you can get some of your messages across. Reporter might interrupt, you might talk over, you might say, you're full of baloney, but you can get your message across. For edited interviews, you really don't have that control. The reporter can edit out anything they think is completely irrelevant or not germane to the topic. So certainly in times of crisis, when you know your issue is going to be contentious with the media, try to do as many live interviews as possible because you can bridge back to your message. Now, here's what gets people tripped up. They think, oh, I know I'm supposed to have three messages. Bridge back to main messages again and again for an edited interview. But since it's live, I don't want to do that because I don't want to bore people. Here's the problem with that attitude. Let's say you're on a live talk radio show. For a whole hour sounds like a lot of time. You don't want to bore people. Here's the thing. If you look at a typical AM talk radio show, for example, you've got news, weather, sports, traffic till about 7 after the hour. The host is going to talk, set things up, maybe another commercial, a few questions. The whole amount of time you talk in the first 15 minute block might only be two or three minutes. Well, guess what? For most talk radio shows, the average listening time might only be 15 minutes. People are listening on their drive to the grocery store or to pick up their kids. They're not listening for the whole hour. So if you don't really nail your messages in the couple of times you have to talk during that 15 minute block for your own two minutes, they're not going to hear it. You certainly don't want to wait till the end of the hour to make your pitch or to talk about the issue you care about the most. In most situations, some shows can be a little different. But that's a big mistake many people make if they oh, it's an hour. We have the luxury of going into so much more detail. You could, but can you really guarantee your audience will remember more, get much more out of it? Are they more likely to take the action you want? Again, I'm operating under the assumption that when you're going on a talk show, you want people to either buy your book, subscribe to your newsletter, vote for you, donate to the charity you're promoting, you want people to take a specific action. So you've got to work back from that and figure out what are the three ideas or so that are going to motivate the audience to take that specific action and then communicate that in a way that's interesting and memorable. Now, what is a little bit different about live interviews is you don't have to speak in sound bites. Although if you do, that only helps. Again, what is a sound bite? A sound bite is simply a more interesting, memorable way of stating a message than stating it in a straightforward, abstract way. The other thing about live interviews is if you say something interesting and quotable, there's no reason why reporters can't pull the quotes from the live interview and put it into other stories. How many times have we seen some newsmaker live on a news program, a Face the Nation, one of the Sunday morning talk shows, say something that's interesting or attack someone, and then the wire services of the New York Times will pull that quote out, put it in stories that get filtered about for the next week. So just because something is live doesn't mean it can't be edited, especially if you say something stupid or something wildly controversial. More in a moment.

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This next question I'm going to toss out to you is one I do hear from time to time. At first blush, it seems ridiculous, but it actually deals with a common problem. The question is, how do you smile during a speech? Now, unless you have a neurological problem or a major dental problem, most people smile all the time. You smile when you're happy. You smile when you're telling a joke. You smile when you hear a joke. You smile when you see a child or someone you love. So human beings smile pretty easily. The problem, of course, is that when you're nervous or uncomfortable, the thing most people do is their face goes blank. If you're giving a speech and you don't love giving speeches and you're not 100% comfortable, most people are in that category, the natural thing to do is to have your face go blank. And the problem then is you are going to look nervous, you're going to look uncomfortable, you're going to look scared. And that can have a downward spiraling effect because you're thinking, oh, I'm not smiling, I'm looking scared to people. They're going to think I'm nervous. That's actually going to make you more nervous. So it's a negative cycle of non virtue, so to speak. So how do you protect against that? Two big ways of doing it. Number one, have some ideas, have some stories that bring a smile to your face. The easiest way to smile is to recount an actual story that's relevant to your audience that brings a smile to your face and then it's authentic. That's yet another reason why you can't just get up and go over fact, fact, data dump, data dump, data dump. It's just hard to smile for stuff like that. What you don't want to do is have a big phony fake smile plastered on your face that's consistent. It has to look authentic. It's one thing people are good at all over the world these days is spotting phony and bad actors. Because everyone watches movies, TV shows produced from Hollywood, Bollywood, the great production houses of the world. And so we're used to seeing bad actors. So if you go from a blank, scared look to too quick of a fake big smile where it's just teeth showing and Your eyes don't look happy. People can spot that. Richard Nixon was famously accused of this, quite often of just too quickly putting on a big fake smile and that building to his image of being insincere. So the solution is to tell stories, say things that naturally bring a light to your face, a smile to your face. The other thing is, I know you've heard me say this before. Some of you are tired of it. You need to practice your speeches on video and, and actually look at your face. Because if you're looking at your face and you're saying, wow, this person seems like he or she is frowning, doesn't look happy, then you can adjust for the next time. If you're in front of a lot of people and you're feeling nervous, especially if there are any video cameras around, my recommendation put just a tiny little bit of a smile on your face, just a little upturn. Think of it almost as just bringing your cheeks up. It doesn't have to be a giant toothy grin, but you want your face up as opposed to completely blank. Because if it's completely blank, you'll look bored and scared. It's something you have to not necessarily practice, but you have to think about it. You have to watch, and you have to measure. I'm TJ Walker. As always, may all of your presentations be a success and. And may they put smiles on other people's faces. See you next time.

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