Your Public Best - Lillian Brown [97]
When you play back the messages on your answering machine, you have a good opportunity to be a voice critic. Do you like the placement of the voice? Does the caller talk so fast that you cannot understand the names and numbers? When you have to play the tape several times to get the message, your critical ear reveals details about the speaker.
When you leave a message on someone else’s machine, it is a golden opportunity for you to practice your vocal skills. That message is a part of your public image. It is the only contact some people will have with you. They judge you by the impression that message gives, so make it a worthy reflection of you.
FIVE
APPEARING ON TELEVISION
A good chunk of my life has been spent in TV studios, going back to the days of black-and-white television. Since video tape had not been invented yet, programs were then live. Shows went on the air back to back, of course, and the traumas of live broadcasting necessitated such things as lots of scrambling, off-camera activity during the ads. It also meant such curious phenomena as when one show was coming to an end, we would “lose” a camera when it had to truck across the studio to get into position to televise the opening of the next show.
In those early days we made up our guests as best we could, experimenting with whatever was available, including heavy theatrical makeup and black lipstick (!).
Today, the television industry is rapidly expanding, with the addition of cable, new network endeavors (such as the Fox network and the new Turner Network Television), the burgeoning syndication market, and new talk shows hitting the airwaves every week.
As a result, more and more individuals from different walks of life are appearing on TV, mostly as guests in the talk-show format, but often as expert analysts, interviewees on local and national newscasts, participants in teleconferences on every conceivable subject from fire fighting to surgical techniques, and people doing public service announcements (called “PSAs”) for nonprofit organizations or causes.
So whether you are a teacher or the president of your local PTA, a new book author or a writer of magazine articles, an economist or a stockbroker, a physician or an attorney, you may find yourself asked to go on the air in one format or another.
Maybe you have never appeared on television before, and the thought makes you somewhat nervous or you really don’t know what to expect.
Maybe you have already appeared on TV once or twice before, but didn’t like (1) something about how you looked; (2) your gestures or body language; (3) the way you talked into the microphone; (4) your experience with a prompter; or (5) something about the format of the program that you didn’t know about in advance (such as how many other guests would be sharing your interview time with you). So now you need some advice on how to do better next time.
Or you may be the veteran of numerous television appearances. If so, you just might find one or two helpful hints in this chapter to improve your on-air persona.
Appearing on television provides you with a valuable opportunity to reach a large audience. That’s why television time is so effective—and expensive. A successful appearance can be beneficial; an unsuccessful one can have dire consequences. The stakes are high, and it behooves you to prepare carefully for your television experience.
Whatever your situation, this chapter will help you to become familiar with the process of appearing on camera, whether live or taped. So, after “The Johnny Carson Show,” “60 Minutes,” “Nightline,” “Nightwatch,” “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “The Morton