Soooo, you've got a big corporate announcement coming up - a groundbreaking of such earth-shattering importance even those stoners from the local free weekly will show up on time. Trouble is, your CEO has all the charm of a bus stop urinal. One he starts thanking his cronies, plants wilt, the punch goes flat and well-rested photogs fall asleep on their feet... OOH! I know! Why not rent a big-ass tent, shove everyone underneath and let the camcorders roll! That way, no matter what metaphor the Big Guy mangles, no one will be wiser - since he'll look one of those Dateline interviews with the dude who sold out The Mob! FUHGEDDABOUDIT!!!!
Okay, so I'm being a wee facetious. But it's hard not to be when you see the same lame set-ups again and again. Have the PR folks who orchestrate these mistakes ever seen a television? Are they secretly trying to sabotage their superior's need to be on the news? Do they all cite chapter and verse of that best-selling book "13 Ways to Eff Up Your Presser"? I truly do not know. But of this one thing I'm sure: Press conferences should be direct, pithy, clear - NOT opaque mistatements riddled with visual enigmas. That and some cat in a power suit is making w-a-y too much coin to produce this kind of off-broadway satire.
To be fair though, we TV geeks aren't gonna put too much of the highly-scripted tripe on the tube anyway. In fact, I'd say 96 percent of what comes after the speaker clears his throat ends up on the cutting room floor. Maybe that's why the Public Relations schlubs seem to go out of their way to blot out the sun with their keynote speaker. Throw in a mult-box with a built-in hum and you have the top two reasons those photogs back there keep rolling their eyes. That and their casing the refreshment table for any signs of surplus muffins. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go put the finishing touches on my latest pamphlet "The Lenslinger Institute's Guide to Eye-Bleeding TeeVee".Next time: "Hey, this spot in the factory features demonic screeches, brackish backlight and fresh green ooze every sixty seconds. Let's put the podium HERE!"
4 comments:
that is such a piedmont thing... they don't roll out the big top for ribbon cuttings in any of the other markets i've been in... or maybe my stations just never sent me to them because they knew i'd go overboard on the deli tray and free sprites.
oh contraire mon frere. big tops and big scissors go hand-in-hand in the south. . . even moreso when giant shovels are around. and every time the speaker looks like part of the witness protection program.
Even up here near the border with Canada we've got a tent problem. However they always seem to have walls which block out ALL the light.
Down in Texas, they set pressers for 10am, when the hottest part of the day starts! And if you're lucky, you might get an air conditioned, country club ballroom with 3 walls of floor-to-ceiling-window-walls with the podium smack dab center in the middle of the brightest one.
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