Don’t write TV off as a news medium yet
February 19th, 2010 by Wendy McAuliffe
I recently watched the film Frost/Nixon which is a dramatic retelling of the post-Watergate television interviews between British talk-show host David Frost and former president Richard Nixon.
As a quick bit of background for those who aren’t familiar with the Nixon Interviews, in 1977 (three years after his resignation), Nixon granted British journalist Sir David Frost an exclusive series of interviews for which he was paid $600,000. The interviews began on March 23, 1977 and lasted 12 days. They were taped for two hours a day, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, for a total of 28 hours and 45 minutes. The interviews were were edited into four programs, each 90 minutes long.
The premiere episode drew 45 million viewers, the largest television audience for a political interview in history — a record which still stands today.
For those who haven’t seen the film, it is a brilliant demonstration of the power of TV as a news medium. No other media would have been able to capture the “cascade of candor”, as Frost termed it, when Nixon said the line: “Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”, effectively giving the US public the admission of guilt that they so desperately craved.
Today so much emphasis is placed on social media, that as an industry we need to be careful not to prematurely write-off media that can still be incredibly powerful for a person or brand. Very recently we secured an interview for a client of ours on Sky News, and the next day their phone did not stop ringing with new business enquiries. We mustn’t forget that audiences can still be reached via linear TV.
An interesting statistic is that average daily hours of television viewing rose to 3.94 hours in Q4 2009, driving 2009 figures to the highest since 2002, according to the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising’s latest Trends in Television Report. TV consumption is on the up, and remains to be taken seriously as a news channel.
Finally, I leave you with a great six minute video on how Richard Nixon turned the media into exaggerated fearmongers. It’s not completely relevant to the post, but well worth watching.
Tags: frost nixon, media training, News, PR, richard nixon, tv
