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Leadership & Life
Extend Your Influence Through TV
(Without Infuriating People!)
Mal Fletcher
A friend recently gave me a book called, 'How to Lose Friends and Infuriate People'. I can only hope he wasn't trying to send me a message of some kind.
It's a great title though -- and a phrase that should be etched as a kind of warning in the minds of every Christian leader who wants to influence people through the mass media.
Sadly, what goes under the name 'Christian TV' often produces little more than laughs from a 'pagan' audience. Tragically, it sometimes even infuriates people and loses potential friends of the gospel!
If you have a heart to speak where people listen, to 'make God famous' through TV, these quick thoughts may help you.
1. If you're being interviewed, address you comments to the interviewer and not to the camera. Keep your eyes on the eye level of the interviewer -- even if he or she momentarily looks away, to consult notes.
Remember: whatever the interviewer is doing, the camera is focussed on your response. If the interview is conducted 'on-the-spot' -- not in a studio environment -- the interviewer's questions may be re-recorded for the camera later.
If you break eye-contact, you appear 'shifty' and unconvincing. (According to lie-detection experts, eye contact is one of the criteria for judging whether a person is telling the truth.)
2. If you're speaking to the camera, treat it as if it were an individual person. Oral Roberts was one of the first Christian leaders to effectively use coast-to-coast, network radio in the USA. Whenever he was on air, he would ask someone to sit opposite him in the recording booth. He wanted to speak with warmth, as if he was addressing just that one individual.
The same principle holds true with visual media. Eye contact is an expression of respect for another person; it shows transparency. This principle is important not just for TV presenters, but for interviewees as well.
Many interviews are now conducted remotely, with the interviewer seated in the studio, and the interviewee on location somewhere else. Both are looking at a camera.
If you're facing a camera, think of it as a friend, not an enemy. Don't get so nervous that you blink three times faster than normal and prepare well, developing your memory so that you don't need to rely on written notes.
3. Speak clearly, and at a natural, measured pace. Don't be in a rush to get to the end of a sentence or thought. It suggests that you're not comfortable with the medium, and that in turn makes the audience uncomfortable with you! (In fact, they may even start feeling sorry for you, and pity is the death of influence.)
Before you go 'on', try some basic breathing and/or muscle-relaxing exercises, just to get you over any last-minute jitters. Smile to yourself just before you're on. That relaxes you and it tells your mind to think positive!
4. Don't wave your hands about, or project your voice as if you're at the football! When someone comes to visit you at home, you don't expect to have them shout at you throughout a conversation. And you don't expect them to gesticulate wildly as if they're directing traffic on an airport tarmac!
The very things that work on a big, airy stage -- projection of movement and voice -- do not work in the very limited area allowed by a TV screen. Remember: if you're on TV, you're in someone's living room.
What reflects passion in a 'live' performance, can simply seem threatening on TV.
5. When you are interviewed, keep a positive outlook, even if you're dealing with a difficult question. Being positive doesn't mean appearing trite, as if you treat weighty matters lightly. It means not allowing yourself to be drawn into personal confrontations.
It also means appearing to be confident (even if you don't feel it!) Try -- within reason -- to smile, or at least not to scowl. An open face reflects an honest heart. Remember, TV magnifies your every move, forcing you into a tiny box in the corner of someone's living room. Better to magnify a basically positive expression than a negative one.
6. If you're asked a difficult question, or one that you weren't expecting, don't allow yourself to become flustered. Take a quiet breath, keep eye contact with the questioner and then answer with the most positive point you can think of.
If the question has been put in such a way that you will look condemning no matter what you say, gently suggest a different approach. 'You know, I don't think that's the big issue here. What we need to be asking is this...' Don't be evasive, but don't allow yourself to be manipulated either.
7. Ask the right questions in advance, and try not to put yourself in a position where you will be made to look deceitful or stupid.
If someone is asking you to appear on a program, they probably know more about you that you think. So, do some research of your own -- on the program and its host(s).
What is their audience (age group, gender etc)? Who else has appeared on the show -- and with what result? Do they have a history of giving Christian leaders a hard time? What are their favourite soapbox issues?
Try to get a written list of any likely interview questions in advance. And, if you can, get some written commitment about the direction the interview will take.
Ask questions like: is this interview going to be pre-recorded? If it is, be very wary, as editing is a highly-developed art form. With the right (or wrong!) editing treatment your answers can made to appear evasive or arrogant.
The basic rule: if you receive a request and alarm bells start ringing, don't do it! Someone else's program is not your turf. They're at home and they have ultimate control.
8. Don't hide behind furniture, as most preachers do on TV. Church-on-TV is valid; it has its place. But it's probably not the best use of the medium. Television is much more a dialogue than a monologue.
Pulpits are great for resting notes on for a public presentation. But if you squeeze the whole image down to just a waste-to-head, medium shot for TV, the pulpit is just an annoying obstruction between the audience -- Joe Smith in his living room -- and the speaker!
There's lot more to making TV that people will actually watch, than setting up two cameras and a pulpit. Remember, people don't have to watch you in their own homes.
If you're serious about speaking to people through TV, remove anything that will come between you and people at home.
9. Be honest, and never forget the camera's ability to magnify everything. It's certainly true that some people have spent years learning how to lie on camera. But, unless you're a very skilful liar and totally without the fear of God, you should always endeavour to tell the truth.
10. Don't say 'I want to be on TV at any cost!' Television is just a medium for communication. If you have a desire to be on TV, stop and ask yourself, 'why?' What do I have to say that isn't already being said? Who can I speak to that isn't already being reached? Is this a mandate from God? Is being on TV part of God's vision for me, or just number three on my own wish-list? God blesses God-ideas, not just good ideas.
© Mal Fletcher 2002
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