The Media Interview

The mother of a reality TV show winner in Britain has admitted to wrongly claiming income support and council tax benefits. Former pop star and TV presenter Kerry Katona was a season winner on I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! - a kind of Survivor for the famous. According to [...]

NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker on paying for media interviews.
From MediaBistro’s transcript of an interview with FT.com managing editor Chrystia Freeland in June 2007:
ZUCKER: Well look, I think the key thing is, anytime you do an interview with anybody is that you disclose what you’re doing.
FREELAND: So if you say ‘we paid a million dollars [...]

This is a follow up to my original posting about NBC reportedly offering $1 million dollars for Paris Hilton’s first post-jail TV interview - some information I missed at the time.
According to a June 21, 2007 report in the NY Post, “NBC Universal boss Jeff Zucker personally called Hilton’s father Rick and made the pitch.”
In [...]

A lot of people, including me, have mentioned that People magazine paid $300,000 for the first print interview with Paris Hilton after she got out of jail. I did say that the Hiltons had withdrawn all request for money, but I wasn’t very clear that this included People magazine.
Here’s an exchange between Anderson Cooper [...]

In Cindy Adams column in the New York Post today, she quotes Barbara Walters on why, when Paris Hilton’s people withdrew demands for payment for the heiress’s first post-jail interview, Walters turned down a free interview. After all, ABC had originally offered $100,000 for the “get”:
Look, I’ve done prison interviews before, but people like [...]

And the winner is - well, maybe “winner” isn’t the word because I personally don’t see getting an interview with Paris Hilton as anything to be proud of - CNN’s Larry King.
After ABC’s $100,000 offer for Hilton’s first post-jail TV interview was rejected, and NBC pulled out and denied any deal had been made, and [...]

Busy day in the gossip mills as rumors flew about which American TV network would first get to interview Paris Hilton (and pay dearly for it) when she’s released from prison. Following a detailed story in the NY Times this morning about ABC losing out on it’s bid of $100,000, reportedly to NBC, the [...]

Bollywood star and winner of the popular reality show Celebrity Big Brother Shilpa Shetty has been granted a work permit by the British government.
Labour MP and former minister Keith Vaz wrote a covering letter for the permit application after which the British government granted Shetty the necessary work permit, enabling her to make money from [...]

Found this interesting observation about paying for media interviews. It’s from Don Hewitt, creator and producer of 60 Minutes, in his 2001 book Tell Me A Story:
The truth is that reputable newspapers and reputable news broadcasts pay for interviews all the time, not in cash but in something more valuable - newspaper space and [...]

Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty, who was in the news recently after racist remarks were made against her during the British reality TV show Celebrity “Big Brother”, ended up the winner of that show just over a week ago. The big money is already rolling in, not the least of which is for media interviews.
Miss [...]