Category: podcast

Podcast flies to the rescue for BA boss

31-Mar-10 16:33

Picture the scene: a very fraught PR team has to position their client at the top of the national news agenda as the company is in the middle of one of the most controversial industrial disputes for decades.

But you don't want any awkward questions to have to deal with from journalists intent on trying to catch you out.

Answer: Record a podcast and let them play that on the News At Ten instead.

I realise I should spend my weekends doing more interesting things but I was genuinely impressed by the way the British Airways boss Willie Walsh managed to bypass all the tricky questions that were destined for him but at the same time managed to get his message across on the evening news, uninterrupted and on his terms.

Mr Walsh has come in for some serious stick over his handling of the BA cabin crew strike that dominated the news agenda very recently as hundreds of Air Mile-hungry media execs wondered how they were going to get to the Maldives for their late winter/early spring/Easter/any excuse holiday.
While the latest news reports were running across the broadcast media complete with furious trade unions, the journalist said that BA had not given them a statement, but instead sent in a podcast of Mr Walsh sitting in his office, telling it like it is from his point of view.

It was well produced and they even got him to look just to the right of camera as if talking to a journo stood behind a mic asking questions.
Here are Ascent we felt it achieved a number of things. First the aforementioned bullet-dodging which is always good, but it also meant that a written statement wasn't sliced up by the editor and read out in a surly voice by the news programme presenter.

The risk is that they news programme won't run it of course and you don't get any of your messages across, but the journalist then stands accused of not giving the airline right of reply in that case and given the option of nothing at all and something, they are more often than not going to take something.

I wonder if this will set a trend and broadcast news journalists will spend even more time splicing together pre-recorded video statements from comms teams, rather than being able to source their own material? And maybe the days of being made to look a fool on TV by a smug-faced journalist are over as well.

 

Simon  (former journalist)