Archive for the ‘television’ Category

It’s TV Time: What A Speaker Should NOT Do On The Air

Tuesday, December 14th, 2010
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Forget Candid Camera, This Time It's For Real!

Forget Candid Camera, This Time It's For Real!

Giving a speech in front of an audience can be one of the toughest things that you’ll ever do. Unless of course you are invited to be on television. Having watched 1,000′s of hours of television you might naturally assume that you are the perfect TV guest. That’s where you’d be wrong…

Why TV Is NOT Your Friend

Think about it for a moment, when you are giving a speech in front of an audience, you actually are in charge. You determine when things start, how they flow, and when your speech wraps up. None of that is true when you are on TV.

Instead, when you are on television you are at the mercy of the person who will be interviewing you. They get to pick when things start, just exactly what questions you’ll have to answer, and they also control when your time is up.

If you are starting to feel just a bit helpless, then you are starting to get the point. Don’t despair: you can prepare for a TV interview and turn it into a success.

5 Things You Should NOT Do On Television

Patricia Corrigan is an author and a speaker who has appeared on many TV shows. Based on her experience, she’s been able to identify what speakers should not do when they find themselves facing a TV camera:

  • Clam Up: Long before you ever make it on air, you’ll find yourself talking with the production assistants. You had better start asking some questions so that you will have the information that you are going to need to do a good job of preparing. How long will it last? What time do you have to show up? Etc.

  • Don’t Prioritize: your time on TV will be short. Although you may have 20 things that you’d like to say, you’re not going to have a chance to cover all of them. Before your big day, take the time to prioritize what you’d like to say. This is going to involve some painful pruning, but it will pay off in making it easier for you to get your point across.

  • Read From Your Notes: there’s nothing that a host or a TV audience enjoys more than watching you look down and read off of your note-cards – NOT! TV interviews are all about you interacting with the host. If you are constantly looking at your notes then this level of interaction won’t be happening. Memorize your facts before the interview starts and you won’t need your notes.

  • Speak Like A Robot: If ever there was a place where vocal variety counted, then it’s on television. If you speak in a dry monotone, then the at home viewers will be voting with their remote control channel changers and you won’t be asked back. Work some energy in your voice and come across as being animated and really caring about what you are talking about.

  • Be A Know-It-All: There will be times when you get asked something that you may not know the answer to. If this happens, then you need to just admit that you don’t know it. If you try to bluster your way through it, then you’ll just end up tripping yourself up and it’s not going to end well.

What All Of This Means For You

Ultimately what we all want to do as speakers is to have our words make the maximum impact on our audience. Television opens up a potentially huge audience to us. In order to make the most of any opportunity to appear on TV, we’ve got to be ready.

We’ve covered 5 things that as a speaker you’re not going to want to do the next time that you are invited to be on television. If you can avoid doing these things, then you’ll come across to the viewers as a knowledgeable expert in your area.

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills™

Question For You: What do you think the best way to make facts & stats available to you during a TV interview is?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Getting up in front of a bunch of strangers can be a challenge for even the best public speaker. The really good ones realize that there is something that they can do about this: change strangers into friends. The challenge is that they don’t have a lot of time to pull this off. This is when your ability to “work a room” can really come in handy…

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10 Tips For Conquering The Final Frontier Of Speaking: Television

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
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What To Do (And Not Do) When You Are “On The Air

What To Do (And Not Do) When You Are “On The Air

I think that it was Bruce Springsteen who in his song “57 Channels (and Nothin’ On)” lamented that although he now had access to 500 channels, there really was nothing on that he wanted to watch. Well of course not, you weren’t on TV yet. However, in the very near future this may all change…

Why Being On Television Is So Hard

With the arrival of everything from iPods to iPads that can display video, more and more speakers are finding themselves being asked to come on TV to share their knowledge and opinions. How flattering is that? However, what all too many of us don’t realize is that being on TV is much, much different than standing in front of a live audience and delivering a speech.

For starters, on TV unless you are the President of the United States, nobody wants to listen to you give an entire speech. We’ve all been conditioned to watch TV in small bites that are sandwiched between commercials. This means that no matter how much you may detest politicians who build their reputation based on sound bites, you’re going to have to boil your message down, down, down.

10 Tips For Being On TV

TV is such a different place to speak that we need to reach out and get some professional advice on how to do it well. David Yewman is a media trainer and a presentation coach who has a lot of experience with the world of TV. He’s got a number of suggestions for how accidental communicators can do well when you get your shot at the big time of TV:

  1. Don’t Look There!: On the “little screen”, your eyes are what everyone will be watching. Something that public speakers don’t realize is that your job is to look at the person that you are talking with – never, ever look at the camera. The host CAN look at the camera, but you can’t.
  2. Watch The Plaids!: As you stand in your closet picking out the clothes that you’ll wear, keep this in mind: plaids and checkered patterns are bad, solid colors such as blues and browns are good. Try to stay away from all white shirts.
  3. Posture, Posture: You might think that since you’ll probably be sitting down, you don’t have worry about posture – wrong! Dave suggests that we never let our backs touch the back of the chair – we should be leaning forward by about 20 degrees to clear our breathing tubes and show that we are interested in the discussion. Unless you are Tom Cruise on Oprah, your behind should be firmly planted in your seat and your shoulders should be squared off.
  4. Shut Up And Put The Makeup On: This pretty much goes out to the guys. Sit down and let the TV studio put makeup on you. If you don’t, you’re going to look horrible. The world of TV is unlike the real world – the makeup looks really bad in real life, but it shows up well on TV. Let the pros do what they want to you.
  5. What’s Your Point?: Your time on TV will be very short. You need to have a set of short “points” that you want to get across. When you are asked a question by the host, answer it but see if you can open an opportunity to fit one of your points into your response. Be ready to quickly deliver one of your points if the host asks you for any closing thoughts.
  6. Practice, Practice, Practice: Do I even have to remind you about this one? The world of a TV studio is an amazing environment and you’ll be swept away once you enter it. Make sure that you know what you want to say and how you want to say it before you arrive.
  7. Shh! I’m On TV: The last thing that you want to happen while you are on TV is to become distracted. That means that you’ve got to turn off everything electronic, make sure that your mic works, and that there are no TV screens in your view that are going to draw your attention away from the host.
  8. Show Some Energy: Would you want to watch yourself on TV if you looked tired or as though you didn’t want to be there? No way! So make sure that you’ve got some pep. TV is all about your facial expressions and your body language – make sure that they are telling everyone that you are excited to be there!
  9. Story Time: If there’s one thing that any TV host loves, it’s a guest who comes with great stories. However, your time is limited so you need to keep them as short as possible.
  10. Change Happens: The world of TV is a very dynamic world. Things will change and so you need to be ready to deal with it. You may end up going longer or shorter than was planned. Make sure that you are ready.

What All Of This Means For You

As public speakers our goal is to have an impact on our audiences. The best way to do this is to make sure that our message reaches the largest number of people possible. Being on TV is a great way to make this happen.

The world of a TV studio is much different from the everyday world that we live in. In order to come across well on TV, you need to change how you act and how you communicate so that you work with the world of TV. We’ve shared the tips that you need in order to do this well.

TV, despite what Bruce Springsteen might say about it, is a powerful communication tool. Speakers who can find a way to use this tool will become even more successful!

- Dr. Jim Anderson
Blue Elephant Consulting –
Your Source For Real World Public Speaking Skills

Question For You: How would you go about turning a speech into a set of “talking points” for a TV interview?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental Communicator Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

Welcome to the real world – things happen. Specially, things happen while you are delivering a speech. Bad things, things that can really screw up your speech. Fire alarms go off, the power fails, a projector bulb quits, your laptop decides to eat itself, etc. What’s a speaker to do?

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Lights, Camera, TV Presentation? 4 Tips For Speaking On Television

Monday, November 17th, 2008
Presenting On TV Requires 4 New Public Speaking Skills

Presenting On TV Requires 4 New Public Speaking Skills

Perhaps you have managed to overcome your fear of speaking to groups of people. Maybe you even have developed ways to deal with difficult questions and keep a presentation on track no matter what happens while you are speaking. However, are you ready to take your skills to that ultimate broadcast medium – television? Probably not, because there the rules are all different. It turns out that there are four simple things that you can do to make sure that you shine on the “boob tube”.

Jo Jo Harder is a fashion designer who found herself being asked to appear on television shows after she started her “America’s Top Dog Model” contest. Talk about being unprepared! Through her struggles and learning she has come up with four top tips for how a presenter should prepare to appear on television. Here they are:

  1. Know Your Subject & Be Prepared To Talk About It: So this sounds sort of silly, but in the end it’s really the reason that you are on television in the first place – you are the expert. One thing that you need to understand about television is that it’s all about time management: you need to speak in short, crisp statements that leave an impression. Your time on camera will be very short and knowing your stuff will help you to make the most of it. I’m hoping that it goes without saying that you should spend some serious time practicing answering probable questions.
  2. Study Your Customer – The TV Show: Even if you’ve never seen the show that you are going to be appearing on before, you had better spend some time coming up to speed on it. You need to know the names of the hosts, the name of the show’s producer, and of course the basic format of the show. You need to know EVERYTHING that you can find out about the show including what time of day it is on, how long it’s been on the air, where taping is going to be taking place. Of course, you also need to know WHAT you are expected to be talking about and just how long you will be expected to be speaking.
  3. Looks Count (A Lot!): No matter what your mom told when you were growing up, on TV looks really do count for a lot. It’s not so much about your looks (you look maaavvolous darling), but rather it’s all about the clothes that you choose to wear. What you want to wear are bright, rich colors. What Harder recommends that we stay away from are white, ivory, and pastels with the exception of women’s blouses and men’s shirts worn under a jacket. Hopefully it goes without saying that EVERYONE needs to stay from bold prints, plaids, and check patterns. If you show up early enough and have a pleasant personality, you just might be able to get some attention from the show’s makeup artist. This can be critical because without some help, we all have a bad habit of looking “washed out” under bright lights. Now just make sure that you’ve combed the hair and trimmed the nails and you should be good to go!
  4. Maintain Your Cool: Remember that television is all about ratings and so the show is having you on in order to try to boost their ratings. That means that anything can happen (“That’s interesting, but let me now introduce your long lost father…!”). Sit with your hands in your lap, your feet crossed away from the camera and look into the eyes of the person who is interviewing you. Smile as much as you can without seeming too weird. Help the show to manage its time by keeping your answers short and to the point. Always be prepared for the host to do something unusual and keep your cool at all times.

So what do you think about this list? Is there anything on the list that you don’t think is important? What should be added to the list? Leave me a comment and let me know what you are thinking.

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