Transcript Excerpt: Pitching Biz TV News
This is an excerpted transcript of “The Biz TV Beat: Biz TV News,” a joint presentation of mediabistro.com and The Publicity Club of New York on July 27, 2006.
The speakers included: Charlie Herman, producer, business news unit, ABC-TV; Karen Toulan, team leader/producer, TV & radio, Bloomberg News; Nick Dunn, chief booker, CNBC and Paul Amin, business news producer, CNN “American Morning”.
Charlie Herman: In terms of pitches, the one thing that I’m looking for — that ABC’s going to be looking for — are trends. To give an example — and I don’t want to single out any company here. If I am, that’s not my intent. But if you represent, say, Panasonic. Or you represent Phillips. Or you represent Frigidaire, or Energy Star. If the story is, “We’ve got this new flat screen TV, we’ve got this new washing machine that saves millions of dollars every year,” that’s not going to be a story in and of itself. We’re not going to do that. But if it is part of a larger piece that is a trend, that more consumers, as energy prices get higher and people can’t afford to pay their bills, more consumers are looking to find ways to save energy by making their home energy efficient. And one of the things they’re doing is. They’re buying these Frigidaire dishwashers. That’s something that we could end up sort of using. Because there’s more of a story. And often times, we’re going to be looking for elements. We’re not looking for the CEO or spokesperson at Frigidaire, to talk about what they’re doing. We’re maybe looking for an actual individual person who bought that Frigidaire, who can explain to us why it was important to them, why they bought it. Also in your pitches, let us know the time sensitivity. Is this something that’s happening this week, or is this an evergreen story, something that’s going on for some time?
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