TJ Walker explains how to recover from stumbling during TV interviews. If you flub an important point in a recorded interview, ask to redo it by saying "let me do that again" and repeat cleanly. Editors will usually use the clearer take, though this won't save a major gaffe.
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So what do you do if you're in the middle of an interview and you've just hit one of your major points, but you stumbled a little, it just wasn't quite smooth, you botched it a little. What are your options? So here's the situation. You're being interviewed by television reporter. It's not live, it's going to be edited, it's going to be chopped up. Sound bites will be pulled out, as is the case of most TV interviews that aren't on live tv. What happens if you give an answer? It's a really important message, something you want to get across, and you just feel like you botched it, it didn't quite come out right. You may be stumbled, maybe you jumbled one of the words. What do you do? What most people do is they just sort of wince inside, beat themselves up and keep going. Because it kind of just feels like here's this whole train going by, you can't stop things. But. But there is another way. What you can do is just say to the reporter, hey, let me do that again. Pause for a second. So when they edit it, there's space. And say your point again as if you were saying it for the first time. And nine times out of ten, the reporter will appreciate it. And if they were going to quote either what you said before or after, they'll use the one you redid. Because they want something that's better, they want something that's clear said in a more articulate way. Now this doesn't help you if you said something really stupid. Now, if you're a politician or major political figure, CEO of a huge company, and you said something ridiculous, this won't help that I'm talking about just mundane issues or an issue where there's no big controversy. But you're trying to get the point across better and you just didn't say it well the first time. There's nothing wrong with asking for a do over. Don't even ask, just do it. Just say, oh, sorry, let me do that again. Hop right into it. It's very unlikely that that could hurt you in any way. And it is highly likely that you get the message you wanted and the way you wanted it in the final story. So please keep that in mind as an option when you're doing TV interviews. This is yet another example of how doing media interviews is simply different from having a normal conversation or a briefing or a meeting. You typically wouldn't say that in a meeting with someone, but it's perfectly okay in a media interview. If you want more help on your interview skills, please call us. That's what we do at Media Training Worldwide. We coach you how to come across your very best in media interviews, private workshops, public workshops and online training. So call us today. 212-764-4955.
