No one says doing a broadcast interview is easy. Sweaty and stressful come to mind. But there are some obvious fails that I hear regularly that can be easily eradicated. And in the run up to the general election we’re not short of lots of material.
Of course, the obvious one is making no attempt to answer or even acknowledge the question – the cardinal sin beloved of politicians. There are lots of techniques to handle the questions you don’t want, but none of those techniques involve simply ignoring it.
But for this post, I’m looking at some of the more irritating smaller habits I’ve seen creep in to interviews that, in my book anyway, should have no place in a good interview and are very easy to banish before they hit the airwaves.
These are my top five broadcast fails:
- Thanking the interviewer for inviting you onto their programme
Why thank them? You’re doing the programme a favour by sharing your expertise (and you’re not being paid for it either) so don’t adopt a feeling that you owe them something. - Asking the interviewer ‘how are you?’
It’s a waste of time and sounds insincere. Most of the time the interviewer won’t respond anyway because they’re too busy working on their opening question. - Using the interviewer’s name
It always sounds too pally – “Well, Jonathan, it’s like this…” – and frankly insincere. The even bigger offenders are the ones who keep using the interviewer’s name throughout the interview. - “That’s a great question”
Again, sounds insincere and is almost invariably untrue. In fact, this is a bad habit in any Q&A format where some people preface every reply by praising the question. - Starting a reply with “So”
It just sounds so