What are the current affairs & news shows looking for?
Most Australian current affairs shows (e.g. ACA and Today Tonight) are looking for a clear ‘hero’ or ‘villain’ within the story. They like controversy! You always hear them refer to people being ‘ripped off’ or someone being an ‘angel’ and helping others.
Most Australian current affairs shows (e.g. ACA and Today Tonight) are looking for a clear ‘hero’ or ‘villain’ within the story.
If you can offer that kind of angle, they will love it. For instance, a laundry powder brand that doesn’t have bulking agents or ‘fillers’ made it through when we pitched it as ‘most laundry powders are a plain rip off’. Another time we got a guide to child-friendly cafes and restaurants featured when we raised the subject of whether cafes should charge for ‘babycinos’ and they decided to interview a group of mums we got together for them at a local café.
News shows
News shows are different again. The person you need to talk to for a news show is the Chief of Staff.
He or she is the person who knows all the stories that are available for that day, and allocates them to various reporters. To get on the news, you need something that is newsworthy first (doh!) which means some new research, an event or perhaps an expert. It needs to be topical and immediate to get on the news.
If you are booking an event in advance, you need to suggest the kinds (and number) of people who will be there and the reporting opportunities. If it something less time-sensitive like research results or an expert to talk to a reporter, or even if you think it might fit as the frivolous story at the end of the news, you will need to try to make it sound both newsworthy and relatively urgent. Maybe the expert is only in town for a short time or the research results are hot off the press.
Whatever the ‘spin’, it needs to make the COS want to send a reporter to cover it as soon as possible.
