The TV Presenter's Career Handbook

How to Market Yourself in TV Presenting

Kathryn Wolfe

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781135075323
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Television

You can present to camera, speak to time, read autocue, conduct an interview, write and memorise scripts; you have a showreel, headshots and a CV—but what next? How do you decide which genre to go for, market yourself and establish your career? The TV Presenter's Career Handbook is full of information and advice on how to capitalise on your presenter training and contains up-to-date lists of resources to help you seek work, market yourself effectively, and increase your employability. Contents include raising your profile, what kinds of companies to aim for and how to contact them, what to do with your programme idea, video and radio skills, creating your own TV channel, tips from agents, specialist genres such as News, Sports, Technology, Children's and Shopping channels, breaking into the US, and more!

Features interviews and case studies with over 80 experts so you can learn from those who have been there first, including:

Maxine Mawhinney and Julian Worricker BBC News anchors, Jon Bentley and Jason Bradbury presenters The Gadget Show, Melvin Odoom KISS FM, Gemma Hunt presenter Swashbuckle, Matt Lorenzo presenter Premier League, Tony Tobin chef/presenter Ready Steady Cook and Saturday Kitchen, Alison Keenan and Marie-Francoise Wolff presenters QVC, Maggie Philbin and Jem Stansfield presenters Bang Goes the Theory, Kate Russell presenter BBC Click, Sarah Jane Cass Senior Talent Agent Somethin' Else Talent, Emma Barnett award-winning radio presenter, David McClelland Technology presenter Rip Off Britain, Louise Houghton and Tina Edwards presenters London Live, Fran Scott presenter Absolute Genius with Dick and Dom, and Claire Richmond founder findatvexpert.com

Part One

Reality Check

one

Personality Check

Welcome to The TV Presenter’s Career Handbook. You don’t have to be a TV presenter to benefit from this book because much of the content applies to people in a wide range of creative industries and performing arts. But if you are a potential TV presenter thinking of entering this industry, a media or performance student or practitioner, a new or experienced presenter, someone with a specialism that can be used in TV presenting, a professional who is thinking of a career change, or anyone with an interest in TV presenting or broadcasting – read on.

This section is called Reality Check because, whist TV presenting is perceived as a glamorous profession, the reality is somewhat different. Of course, being in the industry has fantastic moments – from being on the red carpet to interviewing high profile guests in fabulous locations – but the reality is that TV presenting requires a huge amount of energy, commitment and preparation. Do you have the right personality to cope with the rigours of the job?

Start by thinking about you. Consider your character, temperament and qualities. Recognise your strengths and weaknesses. Try to evaluate objectively how you come across and realise how others see you.

One of the first questions I ask presenting students is ‘Why do you want to be a TV presenter?’ This is not a trick question, it could come up in a job interview in almost any field – celebrity, glamour and wealth are probably not the right answers here!.

What motivates you to present? It could be that you want to communicate to a larger audience, you enjoy interviewing and finding out about other people, there is an issue you want to promote, you have role models who are TV presenters, or you want more variety and challenge in the workplace. It might be that you are already writing, producing or broadcasting, in TV radio, print or online, and you want to be more mainstream or high profile. Alternatively, you could be someone who has watched from the sidelines or from your sofa, and you’ve been thinking ‘I could do that!’

Most TV presenters are freelance and motivation is a key quality to possess, so ask yourself if you really have the personality to go for it – it is a competitive business, and you will need to convince others that you’re really keen and committed.

Darsh Gajjar, an Employability Adviser working in higher education, says: ‘If you want to break into the industry and pursue a career as a TV presenter you have to be a 100% committed networker, with drive and motivation to exploit and create your own opportunities and take on board criticism and develop accordingly.’

Are you a self-starter, happy to contact people you don’t know and ask them to employ you? Do you enjoy meeting new people, would you be able to work alongside a myriad of different colleagues and technicians?

Do you display initiative or do you prefer to be given instructions at each stage? Do you work well in a team or do you like to work independently? Are you persistent and tenacious or do you give up at the first round? Are you fairly thick-skinned or do you take rejection personally?

Can you think on your feet? How well would you cope if the top news story were replaced while you are live on air, reading from a different script? You can train for breaking news, so don’t panic, but it is worth bearing in mind that some people work better under pressure than others.

Are you good at researching a topic, becoming an instant ‘expert’ in a wide variety of discussion points to put to the viewer or interviewee? Can you digest technical information and deliver it to the viewer in easy bite-sized chunks? Are you confident, with a friendly manner, do you possess good communications skills? How is your personal grooming?

The basic skills of presenting are summarised in Chapter Two, Skills Check, but that is not the whole story. A professional attitude will help you go far.

According to John Byrne, Entertainment Industry Career Adviser at The Stage newspaper, the following qualities could make you more employable:

❑ A strong awareness of your own strengths and weaknesses so that you target jobs people can actually employ you in, rather than just jobs you would like.

❑ An awareness that being a presenter is not being the person in the spotlight so much as it is being the public face of a programme making team (whether that team is two people or 50).

❑ Professional conduct at every stage for the benefit of the whole team.

Many presenters agree with the above comments. Do you have the necessary talents or could your attitude be holding you back?

Kate Russell, presenter on top BBC technology show Click, describes a successful presenter:

Passion, knowledge, commitment, articulate, quick-thinker, empathic. You have to be able to work hard for long hours and keep smiling merrily while you are doing it; especially in the beginning before you have made a name, as most productions you work on will be underfunded and everyone overstretched. The easier you are to work with the more repeat jobs you will get – freelance production staff get promoted and move on to other productions that might be looking for a presenter, so treat everyone you work with as a potential employer!

Be honest with yourself and take a cold hard look at whether you’re in the right place. Take advantage of online personality tests – they can be very revealing, with questionnaires that can help you to assess your qualities and priorities. See the resources list at the end of this chapter for links.

Prospects is a free graduate careers site that will match your skills, motivations and desires against more than 400 occupations to find jobs and courses that suit you. You don’t have to be a recent graduate to use the site. The online quiz takes around 15 minutes and in my case it was fairly accurate, recommending theatre director, commissioning editor, TV floor manager or production manager as a career, although it also highly recommended architect! The recommendations can only be linked to the information you supply, so if you are not convinced about the job matches you can tweak and re-edit your questionnaire. The site has plenty of information on jobs, case studies, work experience and advice on how to prepare for job interviews – even the tricky ones!

The National Careers Service has Skills Health Check Tools, again it’s a free resource that helps you to find out what kind of work is right for you. Even if you are 100% sure that TV presenting is what you want to do, the online questionnaires help you to find out more about yourself with assessment of your personal skills, activity skills, interests and motivation. The key qualities in my report were: leading and taking responsibility, persuading and communicating, creating and innovating – I’d like to think this is an accurate reflection of myself. The questionnaires only took a few minutes each and recommended that working in a creative environment was most important for me, that I am a ‘doer’, someone who thrives in practical production, who enjoys a dynamic environment and that I am people-focused. Spot on!

Profiling for Success has an excellent tool to explore your personality preferences in relation to the world of work, in addition to assessing your abilities. It’s an online resource and you pay for each test that you take.

Another approach is the Jungian theory of personality types. Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist, proposed the concepts of extraverted and introverted personality. By assessing your personality type you can work on your personal development, particularly useful when reflecting on your career choice and understanding yourself. It’s about recognising who you are and how you work best – it’s no good entering an industry that doesn’t suit you.

If you take this route of personality testing, be candid with the answers – you needn’t show them to anyone else! Or, you could ask your friends what they really think, although that could turn out to be embarrassing!

To do list

❑ List your strengths and weaknesses.

❑ Evaluate presenter qualities and match them to your own.

❑ Analyse your personal motivation and abilities.

❑ Explore online personality tests.

Click, read, discover

Online personality tests and career advice

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www­.pr­ofi­lin­gfo­rsu­cce­ss.­com­/pr­ofi­le-­you­rse­lf.­php

http://prospects.ac.uk

Interview advice

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US

http://career-advice.monster.com

www.careercc.org

two

Skills Check

TV presenting is a skills-based profession; you will need to prove to your agent, director or producer that you can do it! Screen tests are exactly that – they test what you can do on the screen and how you relate to the camera/viewer. Your aim is to show employers that you have the skills and personality to handle whatever is asked of you in an audition.

So what can come up and how do you deal with it? There are many training opportunities on offer, from one day short courses to degrees in Media Performance or Acting that incorporate TV presenting. If you do not have training it is highly advisable to get trained, although if the producer really wants you to do the job and you are not trained, then it is possible to be given a crash course to get you up to speed. The risk with this approach is that your best work, when you have gained confidence, may not be until the last recordings of the show!

Here is a brief refresher of basic presenter skills that you will be expected to have:

Be yourself

Presenting is about being you; it is not acting, or pretending to be a presenter. You should not ‘be in character’ as when acting, but have the confidence to be yourself.

Talk to the camera

Reach your audience through the camera lens, so engage with the viewer by speaking conversationally to the camera. Look directly at the camera lens most of the time, except when you look at your guest, co-presenter, props or script as appropriate. In real life we may look out of the window or at the floor when talking to someone, but this doesn’t really work on TV as it breaks the bond with the viewer, making the presenter look shifty. When speaking in public you should look at everyone in the room, but for TV keep your eye-line focused on the lens.

Perform for video

There is no need to use larger than life expressions or project your voice as the camera and mic will pick it all up – it’s about performing for a screen, which is not the same as public speaking or performing on the stage. Typically today’s TV screens can be 55–65 inches widescreen, magnifying any insincerity in the face. Being real is important. Give a performance with energy, which does not mean shoutin...