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Who's Imus? - Tips on Doing a Radio Interview
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It’s April 1990. My first book, Full Circle: The Near-Death Experience and Beyond has just been released, and I am in a long black limo being driven through traffic in Manhattan. We’ve just picked up a Simon and Schuster publicist, straight out of The Devil Wears Prada, only this girl is even younger than Anne Hathaway. I am pushing 47 and feeling quite old sitting next to her. I’m also chuckling, thinking about what my blue collar neighbors in Connecticut must have said when a stretch limousine picked me up to take me to The Big Apple.
My publicist informs me that we are doing a TV show in Jersey and a radio show that will broadcast live during the 5:00 p.m. rush hour: A perfect time to be heard in the tri-state area. She carefully breaks the news to me that this interview is going to be rough. She explains that it’s just his style and he is listened to by most New Yorkers. There is dead silence for awhile, and then she continues, telling me how to roll with the punches.
The TV show went well, and as we left my publicist informed me that it will be watched by the whole tri-state area, mainly stay-at-home moms, and that they could buy my book. As I began digesting this information, my publicist began prepping me for my interview with Don Imus.
“Who’s Imus?” I ask.
“You don’t know who Imus is?” she answers, making me feel like I just landed from Mars. My excuse now, looking back eighteen years, is that I never listened to the radio, unless of course I was being interviewed.
In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s I was interviewed constantly about near-death experiences and the research at the University of Connecticut. I was even in a newsletter that went out to all the radio stations with bios on experts. That lasted a month, and I was on at least two radio shows a day somewhere in the U.S. and in Canada.
Through my experiences on radio, I offer the following advice:
1) Most radio interviews can be done from home over the telephone. If interviewing from home, don’t use a cordless phone; they sound fuzzy compared to a phone with a cord.
2) If another caller can click in to your line turn that feature off of your phone. The lick will be heard on air and can be a distraction.
3) Ask for a CD of the interview when the radio host or producer sets up the interview. Its important to have a clear recording of the interview to put on your website.
4) Realize that you won’t like every interview. Every host has his or her own agenda.
5) Talk radio is big now. Take every show you can get, even if its at 3 a.m. Someone’s shift is ending, and there are always commuters listening somewhere.
6) Laugh at your interviewer’s jokes and cracks.
7) Make sure either you or the host gives ordering information for your book. I recommend repeating the website and phone number for your publisher’s ordering department a few times throughout the course of the interview.
8) Add what you want to say even if the interviewer doesn’t ask about it and have what you want to say in front of you in big print. Remember, we’re the ones that are the authority; that’s why we wrote the book.
9) Finally, don’t take yourself too seriously. Radio interviews get easier over time and actually become fun.
My publicist left before the interview started, saying that it was almost 5 p.m. and that if I didn’t mind, she was ready to call it a day. I hope she listened to the show on her way home because this man was not who she described. Don Imus was a gentleman. He actively expressed genuine enjoyment for my topic and my book. The questions that came in over the phone were also positive. Just before the interview ended, he opened my book to the page he had marked and read one of my poems to me. That poem starts the second half of the book with the beginning of my new life. Don Imus read the following to me:
I sit patiently, now
In my solitude.
Awaiting the dawn
Of my release
Knowing a death has
Occurred.
Two cautious still
To announce my rebirth.
But starting to sense my need
For lessons in crawling, then walking.
So I may eventually Skip
And Dance
And Live
To my Heart’s Own Content.
It was a gentle moment where I realized that he and I probably had more in common than I understood. I walked away feeling good. This was the first feedback I received on my first book, and I knew that he understood. Years later, I would learn of Imus’s reputation. I believe that his reputation is show biz. Behind that, his heart beats just like the rest of us.
Click here to read "Oprah Who?" Barbara Harris Whitfield's TV interview tips.
Barbara Harris Whitfield is the author of five books and numerous articles on the near-death experience and natural spirituality. She is a near-death experiencer and respiratory and massage therapist. She spent six years at the University of Connecticut Medical School researching the psychological, emotional, and energetic after effects of spiritual awakenings and recently retired from teaching at Rutger’s Institute for Alcohol and Drug Studies. Barbara lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband, author and physician Charles Whitfield, MD. They share a private practice helping adults that were repeatedly traumatized as children. Barbara’s new book, The Natural Soul, will be coming out in 2009 with SterlingHouse Publisher. For more information go to http://www.cbwhit.com and http://www.barbarawhitfield.com
