3 basics of pitching TV producers

When I was a TV news producer, I would shudder in annoyance each time I took a pitch from PR pro—because most did it wrong.

Booking guests was one of my primary responsibilities. It was fairly easy to land a slot on my show—unlike the shows of some of my colleagues—provided you had an interesting visual story to share.

1. Give producers the goods up front.

Producers have two urgent questions:

If you can’t answer those two simple questions within the first minute (or less) of your pitch you’ve already lost them.

That brings me to another sticking point: brevity.

Edit yourself; give them one-two punch right away. Producers are busy people. In a shrinking newsroom, they’re doing ten things at once, choosing content, writing scripts.

RELATED: Think like a journalist to get your story covered at our PR Writing Conference.

2. Don’t become a pest.