How To Get Booked On TV And Not Screw It Up

Peter Shankman
3 min readJun 14, 2021

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I was on TV again last weekend.​

It wasn’t anything major, just a local news hit. They are always fun to do, took about three minutes out of my day. Plus, it’s another piece that will get added to my media collection to give me more credibility and validity when people hire me to speak.

Wanna know my secret way to get booked on TV?

Get booked and establish your authority on any subject.

I let TV news producers know I was in town. It’s literally that simple.

Think about it — It’s summer. Summer means people getting out of town for the weekend, making long weekends a thing until September. But breaking news doesn’t respect that, does it? Producers still have to create a news show daily, if not 24/7, and reporters still need to interview people. When most of their sources are at the beach, that makes it a little harder for them.

So make it easier for them, and for you. Drop an email to your favorite producers and reporters and let them know not only that you’re around, but that you’re ready and willing to talk about topics A, B, and C, anytime they need you.

YOU CAN GRAB MY EMAIL TEMPLATE HERE.

You know what’ll happen? They’ll call you, and you’ll get media attention. I’m proof of that.

I mean, come on… What else were you doing on Saturday at 2:30pm?

On the flip side…How about some honest talk about the time I screwed up in front of a live television audience of hundreds of thousands of people? Yeah. That was a fun day.

About eight years ago, I was invited to go on CNN and discuss some current events in the world. As always, I dropped everything and cleared my schedule to make it happen. The producer sent me three articles on the topic about which I was discussing. I’d read the news that morning, so I didn’t bother to read the articles.

We go live, and the very first question from the reporter is this: “So what did you think of the editorial that the Governor wrote in the Wall Street Journal this morning?”

Of course, that was one of the three articles I’d been sent, and of course, I hadn’t read it.

I stumbled through an answer, the rest of the interview was awkward to say the least, and that specific producer has never asked me to work with her again. While she’s no longer at CNN, (I don’t know where she is,) I’m grateful to her, as she taught me one of the biggest lessons I’ve ever learned, and that’s this:

If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.

Never believe that you know everything. YOU DON’T. Rather, soak up as much knowledge about everything, whenever you get the chance. ABL: Always Be Learning. You never know when you’re going to need the information. Information learned is never learned in vain. It can always benefit you.

PS: Want to get on TV even more? On in the newspaper or magazines? Or in online news sites? I created a course last year which will teach you everything you need to know about getting on TV. And get this — I’m discounting it to $99 today. Go get it!

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Peter Shankman

Host: Faster Than Normal #ADHD Podcast. Bestselling author, marketer, HARO Founder. Book for virtual keynote speaker: http://bit.ly/PSvirtualkeynote