The Media Interview

We may complain sometimes about the quality of shows on mainstream television, but there are far more well-written and certainly more well-produced programs today compared with, say, thirty years ago, and not just because there are far more programs. That’s due in part to far more competition than there was thirty years ago - there are more opportunities for quality to find a venue.

PR and Social Media blogger, Ed Lee, makes a similar point about the future of media interviews:

in an era of the democratisation of media where more and more people are being called for interviews, and not just from the C-suite, the media and those who consume the media are bored with stale old rent a quotes…

simple percentages would suggest that the better interviewees rise to the top and are asked [b]ack. ergo people are exposed to more people who actually give good interview and therefore become less and less tolerant of those who give bad interview…

Another way of looking at this is that in a universe of millions and millions of “channels”, you’ll need to give a better interview if you want your message to stand out, even within niche markets. It’s not enough for a romance writer, for instance, simply to get an interview on a romance blog - if there are six thousand romance blogs, you’d better make your interview worth reading over all the other romance writers being interviewed.

And if we look at this from the standpoint of media coaching, while there will always be a demand for “spin coaching” - getting out of tough questions - I think there’s going to be far more demand for media coaching which helps people prepare to be, as Ed puts it,

charming, intelligent, knowledgable and funny so you can appeal to those watching while answering the questions and telling your own story at the same time.