TJ Walker says individuals and PR departments should build home broadcast studios instead of traveling to TV studios. A basic setup costs $30 to $5,000 and makes you available for interviews anytime, increasing your chances of getting booked. He walks through the equipment: camera at eye level, real microphone, lights, and sound treatment to avoid backlit windows.
Questions this video answers
September 2, 2015.
Up to three hours.
He mentions a budget as low as $30 and that he has about a $5,000 studio.
Less than $10.
$48 (used as an example).
Chapters
If you haven't set up a remote broadcast studio in your home or office, what are you waiting for? Folks, the days are over when you have to leave your office, leave your home, schlep all the way across town, go to some TV studio, sit around in the green room, sit around and make up, do the three minute interview, and then have a long schlep home through traffic. Now I used to do that frequently. Msnbc, Fox, cnn, other places. And when you really add up all the time, it could be as much as three hours out of your day for a three minute hit. Is it necessarily worth it? And what if you don't have three hours? Well, I'm here to tell you those days are gone. Technology has solved the problem. If you're willing to do a little bit of work, and it's not difficult, it's not expensive, but it can be done. The answer is create your own broadcast studio. Now that sounds fancy and expensive. All it really means is having a webcam, a decent light or two, someplace that isn't noisy, and a backdrop that isn't your window. Right now I'm in a home studio. I'm in my home. This is actually a closet. And yet I routinely do interviews with major broadcast TV stations in New York, TV networks all over the world, Russia television, Al Jazeera, you name it. And they're more than happy to do interviews with me right here because I've got a mic, I've got a backdrop, I've got got lights, I've got a camera. Here's what you need. And your budget could be $30 or it could be if you want to get fancy. I have about a $5,000 studio, but it's really certainly well within the means of most corporations. What you need is a video camera that's at eye level. Now if you're using a laptop, just put your laptop on top of the stack of books. Make sure you have something behind you that isn't a window because the light from the window messes it up. This is Simply an old TV I wasn't using anymore and a $48 video loop behind it. Make sure you have some lights in front of you. Now I do have studio lights that I bought at a B and H video, but they only cost a few hundred bucks. You don't even have to have that. I do have carpeting on the walls to muffle echoes so the sound quality is better. And finally, you need a real microphone, not a built in microphone to your computer. You can get a simple lav, plug in mic for less than $10 on Amazon. So now, if you have a media interview request and you don't have three hours, you can say yes, but tell the TV booker or producer or reporter that you're available through Skype Video and you have a broadcast studio available in high quality. Now, will everyone take that? The States? No. More and more major networks will, especially if it has to do with breaking news and you are a credible expert. If you're pitching yourself to the media. You make yourself a lot more attractive to the media if they know they can interview you at any time without having to send somebody out to you. So it will increase your chances of getting interviewed. So I beg you, if you're trying to get publicity for yourself, if you're trying to promote yourself to the media, you can really increase your odds by having your own home studio now. You can have a backdrop with your name or logo in it. If you're a health guru, you could have something that's like a gym or a swimming pool. And this is just an old TV with a video loop plugged in on a disc on a computer. So don't give up the opportunity to your competitors. Seize this opportunity for yourself. If you're a PR department or a PR firm, you frankly ought to be ashamed of the yourself if you don't have one of these now because you're really letting a lot of opportunities slip through your fingers for your clients and people within your organization.
