09 Jan 10 The Glamour of Live TV

Being interviewed on live TV is fun. It truly is. The lights and set-up are cool, the fact that you are in front of a million people is neat and all-in-all I would recommend it to anybody who feels they have a message they want to bring and who has some sort of expertise that the media seeks or that you can make them agree that they need to seek.

Having said that, I just had an experience with Fox Business News that also serves as a reminder that live TV is, well, live. If you are going to do this you have to be comfortable with the fact that things will happen that are beyond your control and will either push you over the edge or turn into one of those funny stories that you can keep forever.

I recently did a Special Report on CEO New Year’s Resolutions. My findings…most CEOs are conservatively optimistic about 2010. Seventy-five chief executives responded to my question and I put all of this together into a multi-page report sharing the overall themes of the findings. Not the most earth-shattering news, but news that interested Fox Business.

Now, I have a love-hate relationship with Fox as they do with me I think. On the one hand, while fairly conservative, I am not nearly as anti-government as the “fair and balanced” station is. On the other hand, because I am also not a screaming, yelling liberal, I serve a purpose for them as a counter-opinion on some topics that they can use to balance their coverage to some degree. In other words, I’m not tremendously threatening but at the same time, they can engage in a bit of a debate with me.

I say all this to say that when I am on Fox I am always on my toes because they have a tendency to try to bait their interviewees into their particular point of view. They also do their remote tapings from some difficult settings. In this case I was at the Fox 2 station in Detroit but set up on a chair with a table and a camera. Period. No monitor or anything to see who I was speaking with…just a set up so I could be filmed. In those cases the only connection you have with the actual interviewer is a small earpiece that allows you to hear what is on the air. (This takes some getting used to as well because you are then essentially talking to yourself.)

So, on December 31st I knew that Fox would be focusing on the miserable 2009 and trying their darndest to make it all about the evil Democrats. My argument was that, once you get below the dozen or so leaders that we focus on in the media, most executives were ready to get on with it in 2010. I’m sitting on my stool, earpiece firmly in place and am given the 10 second warning that we are almost live.

Then the platform my chair was sitting on broke.

Then the earpiece popped out.

Then the reporter was on the other side and we were live. I knew this was the case because somewhere in the distance I could hear my name as Dagen McDowell began the piece. Additionally, I was holding onto the bottom of the table for dear life to keep from tipping over. That “fun” moment had become horrific because I could just imagine either not answering a question she asked because I couldn’t hear her and/or disappearing from the camera frame because my chair broke entirely.

You really need to watch the video if you haven’t seen it already. I look like Quasimodo all hunched over and at one point it looks like I’m going to get up and walk away. I didn’t answer the first question at all, got close with the second, and then…when the baiting question at the end came up…I disappointed Dagen with the fact that I didn’t bite. You really should see this…she actually points her finger at me as she says, “I beg to differ but that’s an argument for another day.”

By the way, that is a perfect ending to a media appearance like that. Her comment at the end will serve as an invitation in the future to be back on Fox News with a story about the difference between the average concerns of a CEO and the ones that are most often in the news. In other words, if the purpose of publicity is in some way to get more publicity, this has the potential of being highly successful.

Of course, if I had let go of that table and disappeared from the screen as my chair collapsed, I suspect that would have gotten as much publicity in the end. At least I would have appeared on the blooper reels for who knows how long!

Tags: accountability, CEO New Year's Resolutions, Global Leadership, leadership integrity, motivation, trust