The Media Interview

Larry King gave a good demonstration last night of what not to do as a guest. He was on Anderson Cooper 360, being interviewed by John King about Dr. Jan Adams walking off the Larry King Live show.

Larry King was constantly looking away from his interviewer and at the camera. Breaking eye contact in order to look at the camera creates a bad impression; suddenly you’re no longer in a conversation - you’re playing to the lens and it feels disingenuous. Perhaps King was still in “host mode” and forgot that he’s the interviewee talking with someone in a studio (as opposed to via satellite). Whatever the case, I’m sure he doesn’t like it when his guests do such a thing.

Answer: carry on as if they did and have your own people pose questions to you.

That’s what FEMA did back on October 23rd. Having informed the media of a briefing on the California wildfires 15 minutes before it was to start, it’s not surprising that no one turned up.

A couple of reporters listened in on the 800 number (listen only - no questions). One of them, a Washington Post reporter, began to notice that the questions apparently being posed by reporters to Deputy Administrator Vice Adm. Harvey E. Johnson were not very probing. Turned out, it was FEMA staff members calling out the questions as if they were reporters.

Here’s what it looked like, as carried live by Fox News:

FEMA’s deputy director of public affairs defended the botched news conference by saying that the questions were ones that reporters had been asking earlier in the day and that Johnson did not know what he was going to be asked. So that’s ok then… hmmmm.

The two most obvious courses of action would have been to reschedule the briefing or read a statement. To pretend that the media is asking questions is to give the impression that some scrutiny is going on.

I’ve never been a huge fan of talk shows (or any show) that has a street-level window for a backdrop. Inevitably, something distracting is happening on the street… like the other morning in Ottawa, Canada:

Morning Show Mooning Revisited - Watch more free videos

Thanks - I think - to Keith Olbermann on Countdown for tipping me off to this video.

Anyone who’s been on a long media tour or simply didn’t get enough sleep before an interview will really feel for Israeli President, Shimon Peres, as he literally nods off on live TV.

Author Carolyn Hughley is doing her first TV interview in the morning and she’s having a bit of trouble sleeping…

I crawled back out of bed and headed to the bathroom to take two sleep aids, thinking they might help. I no sooner swallowed that last pill when I suddenly began worrying that I’d sleep too soundly and not hear the alarm. Then I worried maybe the alarm wouldn’t go off, or I’d forget the things I wanted to say.

To find out how the rest of the night went and what happened at the interview, check out this blog posting from Carolyn, the self-proclaimed “Queen of Worry.”

Saw a live TV interview today in which the guest caught a bad case of the swivels. Seated on a swivel chair behind a news desk, the guest’s very effective hand gestures and body language resulted in making the chair twist back and forth just enough to make me seasick.

One of the dangers of being saddled with a swivel chair is that in your effort not to move, you can wind up looking stiff and uncomfortable. Try to get a different chair or ask if there’s a way keep it from moving using a locking mechanism. If all else fails, try stabilizing yourself with one leg on the floor and the other on the leg of the chair, then confine your movements to your arms and head where possible.

Anyone suffered through this experience? How did you cope with the swivels?

Here’s the most detailed explanation I’ve found by Paula Abdul herself (posted on MeeVee), for her odd behaviour in those recent TV satellite interviews. Accepting her explanation here still doesn’t answer why she or her handlers didn’t stop the interview and say ‘there’s a problem or I’m so tired I can’t do this, etc.’ Whatever you think, it’s also an interesting peek at life on a satellite tour.

Okay, what a lot of you may not know is that when you do the satellite media tours, you’re in a small room. You get up really early, 3:30 in the morning. You go and all there is is one camera that you’re looking into. You don’t see anyone; you don’t have a monitor that shows you; but you’re being broadcast out to different morning shows, news shows.

I did three hours of them. There were a couple of glitches throughout, but the very last one that I did after three hours had tremendous technical difficulty. What happened was there were split cities in my ear, but I thought it was all one group of people that were talking over [each other]. That’s what I was hearing in my ear. I’m going, “Oh, you’re having like a party there?” I had no idea that there were two completely different cities. So when they started to have technical difficulty, I was holding on, waiting. And I’m in a swivel chair and I’m swiveling and I’m very animated with my hands. Had I known that, you know, it’s cropped here, and that I’m actually answering questions… It was very weird, because what you’re hearing is not exactly who I was answering questions to.

Unfortunately, that’s what happened. I was answering to, was transmitting right to one of the cities. It’s so silly. It’s hard to explain unless you’re in there. But it’s very simple. I had two different cities in my ear. I was answering questions to [reporters in one city]; apparently it didn’t make sense to the person who was asking them.