Opening SOundbite YOur prime real eState

Excerpt from The Ultimate On-Camera Guidebook: Hosts*Experts*Influencers

by Jacquie Jordan (@TVGuestpert) & Shannon O’Dowd (@ theshannonodowd)

The most important words of your television segment are the first words that come out of your mouth. I call this prime real estate. After all, as one of my favorite clichés goes, “you never get a second chance to make a first impression.” This impression establishes your relevance and value to the topic being addressed.

Often, the host’s lead-in question (“How are you?”) or lead-in introduction (“Welcome to the show.”) is often not the best setup or lead-in for brand messaging. It’s wasted airtime for you and your segment. Filler words. A loss of real estate value to the expert’s overall goals.

The bold guest expert will recognize this and say, “I’m good, Doug, but really concerned about the opioid crisis that’s killing our country right now. I’ve seen firsthand the wreckage of our policies as an addiction specialist.”

Another opening can be “As a doctor who’s treated hundreds of patients suffering from bipolar disorder …” or “Because of my experience working on the front lines of the eco sustainability movement in the fashion industry …”

Instead, many guests answer with, “Thanks for having me on the show.” Then they pause and wait for the host to lay out their first real question.

Thirty seconds burn up. Viewers have changed the channel. These guests have missed an opportunity to come out with a bang to the audience by contextualizing their expertise and stating a position on the topic at hand.

In response to the host intro, you want to add additional credits that are relevant to the specific topic, reestablish the topic and include why you are qualified to speak on it, then begin your point of view without wasting time. This also assists the viewers at home as to why they want to stay further engaged in the segment as opposed to changing the channel. Get right to it!

For example, a host might say, “To tell us why digital media is here to stay is Jacquie Jordan, a two-time Emmy-nominated television producer and a New York Times bestselling publisher. Welcome, Jacquie.”

My opening sound bite in response to this introduction would be the following: “Thank you, Jim. Ten years ago, when I wrote my first book, Get on TV! The Insider’s Guide to Pitching the Producers and Promoting Yourself, I already knew that television was undergoing a radical change, which started with the DVR and the disruption of commercial advertising as we knew it. Those of us in the business were faced with a clear choice: adapt or slowly become extinct. I chose life, Jim!”

An untrained expert can burn up to thirty seconds of airtime in pleasantries before getting into the segment. On radio, guests often forget that the listener has been listening continuously, and that the guest is the only one who just entered the room. For me, as an advocate for my experts’ businesses, pleasantries are problematic, as they offer little to no value. No permissions needed here. Forget everything you think about your appearance being an interview. The word “interview” is an erroneous description of your time on camera. It is a wellorchestrated tango. The producer is the choreographer, the host is the dance lead, and the guest is the dance follower. It is structured but allows for organic flow to the timing of the moment.

A contextualized opening sound bite will immediately launch you, the host, and the audience into the heart of your content and get your segment off to a roaring start by reestablishing why viewers should commit the next few minutes of their life to you. This opening sound bite is also a meaningful way to define your expertise, while simultaneously tying it into your branding and delivering the prescribed segment at hand. This is an essential tool to use without becoming a pitch person, which is a big no-no to audiences and, especially, producers!

Longtime guest expert Dr. Carole Lieberman executed a very effective opening sound bite on a FOX affiliate recently after the host used over thirty seconds to introduce both Carole and her book, Bad Girls. That is a lot of TV real estate for the host to eat up for a segment only slotted for six minutes, which is why understanding your content is important for your on-camera appearance. The first words out of Dr. Lieberman’s mouth cut right to the chase: “When I wrote Bad Boys all the guys were asking, ‘When are you going to write Bad Girls?’ Well, here it is.’’

Dr. Carole Lieberman, seasoned TV expert of over twenty years, needed only one sentence to let viewers know who she was, an author with more books to her credit than the one she’d be promoting on the show, and why she was there: to offer the flip side of a gender story. That is the art of an opening sound bite. By taking advantage of the opening sound bite as an opportunity to communicate a brand statement on a relevant hot topic, the expert paves the way for the rest of the segment. It will now be that much easier for the expert to speak with intentional purpose, and for the audience to understand why the expert is participating on the show.

If you watch TV closely, most experts simply answer the questions the host asks. They’re way too literal. Politicians, of course, do the exact opposite, taking the art of dodging a question to the other annoying extreme. At TVGuestpert, we are serving two interests: our B2B and our B2C. We are providing our producing community with camera-ready experts who know how to deliver their content in a right-on-time, agreedupon manner. This is our business to business (aka “B2B”). We are also servicing our clients by supporting their goals or businesses by booking their appearances. This is our business to consumer (“B2C”). In serving both masters, we are there to make sure the choreography of this pre-orchestrated tango comes off flawlessly while delivering entertainment and delight to all participants... especially the viewers at home!

Jacquie is the founder and CEO of the 15-year-old cuttingedge, media and content development, promotions and booking platform, TVGuestpert that offers full-service promotion, marketing, business strategy and media services for her clients, partners and collaborators, TVGuestpert Publishing - a NY Times Best Selling publishing house, and The Guestpert Academyan online program offering visibility, media training and TVGuestpert On-Camera Training. She is also a two-time Emmy nominated TV Producer, three-time author and the host of Front & Center with Jacquie Jordan, a broadcast podcast.