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Speak up – Don’t Speed Up

By Roz Morris, Managing Director, TV News London Ltd

When people are not used to giving radio and TV interviews they are often taken aback by how short broadcast news interviews are. “Two and a half minutes? Three minutes? How on earth am I going to get everything I want to say into such a short time?” they ask when they come for our media training. 

And then some people make a common mistake. They think they will get all their points into their interviews if they just speed up and talk really, really fast. But of course this is not a good policy at all.  Why? Because if you speed up when you are talking on the radio or TV, you just lose the audience.

People are not taking an exam about what you say in a news interview. They don’t haveto listen to you. And if you speed up, yes you will get lots of points into your interview, but, when people find it hard to keep up with you, they will just give up and stop listening.

So by speeding up you won’t say anything that people will remember. In fact speeding up won’t achieve anything except people thinking you’re a nervous and rather unprofessional person who can’t talk calmly and clearly about their area of expertise.   

Some inexperienced spokespeople are just very nervous and they find they speed up and talk too fast to be easily understood because of their nerves. They won’t be listened to either. They have to learn to pace themselves and train themselves to speak at a steady pace.   

Preparation is the main key to success.  If you prepare your concise points that you want to get across, you will feel more confident about getting your messages into your short interviews. And the best way to learn about that is to take some media training with TV News London and learn from broadcast experts how to prepare and deliver effective media interviews.

When you can speak up and speak clearly and calmly, you will find that people will remember some of what you say or, at the very least they will form a positive and professional impression of you and your business or organisation.  And then it will be worth you spending the time and the nervous energy to do radio or TV interviews.  So remember – speak up, don’t speed up and you’ll have a good chance of success on radio and TV.

To find out more watch Roz’s Tips video below or email us on info@tvnewslondon.co.uk

https://youtu.be/VC6CEY0rFVs