TJ Walker explains why live interviews beat pre-recorded ones. Editors can cut smart content and amplify mistakes in recorded segments, while live interviews preserve context and let guests repeat key messages without manipulation.
Chapters
Live interviews are always better than recorded interviews. Now, this is counterintuitive. Most people, especially novices, erroneously believe, oh, I'll be too nervous doing a live interview. Much better to do a recorded interview. Here's the problem with that. With a recorded interview, you can be great for an hour and say something stupid for 10 seconds. That's the only sound bite that will get on the news or get played again and again and again. You actually give a lot more power to the reporter, the producer, the editor. In an edit interview, they can cut out everything you said that was smart, rational, intelligent, and make you look like a fool. Now, I'm not suggesting you turn down interviews that are recorded in advance, but when you're given the choice of live versus edited, I believe you should always go for the live option. When it's live, you have much greater control over what people see because they're going to see all of it. You have much greater ability to weave back messages you care about that are perhaps not quite as interesting to the reporter. So it's one of these things where people feel like it's riskier, but it's actually much safer. That's why occasionally you will see a very high profile senator or politician refuse to go on a show like 60 Minutes unless it's live. Now, 60 Minutes doesn't usually do that, but some newscasts will give in. If it's a highly contentious issue, huge controversy, and you know the reporters want to talk to you, the news network wants to talk to you, you can sometimes insist on a live interview. That doesn't work for most people who aren't wildly famous or important. But the rule of thumb, anytime you have an option, go for the live interview. The other beauty of it is it's very rare not to get more airtime. That way, you're not going to be cut down to a 10 or 20 or 30 second sound bite. You're going to get at least a few minutes. So that's yet another reason why live interviews are always better. It feels scarier. Actually, it's much safer.
