SARAH PALIN’s Next Move

Make no mistake, Sarah Palin entered the political scene last year like a bolt of lightening. But the flash has since passed and she now finds herself trapped in a back-and-forth with David Letterman. This is a losing situation for her as there is no winner in a verbal war with a smart-ass. Even if she is right the best she can hope for is a tie. She needs to get past this as soon as possible as she has a much bigger issue to confront which I call the “Dan Quayle factor”.

 

Governor Palin now finds herself in the same hole former Vice-President Dan Quayle could never dig out of – namely the general perception of being an intellectual lightweight. Americans almost always insist that their presidents have a certain gravitas, a grown-up, human intelligence quality about them. George W being the most recent and obvious exemption to this rule. He got in because people also strongly want to like their president. Say what you want about W’s politics, he did seem like an OK guy to have a beer with. Palin, while likeable enough, often comes off too strident. Further, she was sunk early on in the campaign when she could not come up what newspapers she reads. You will not find a bigger group of know-it-alls than the national media who circle like sharks around a weakness like this. Every misstep, or even the hint there of, gets micro-analyzed, and cut into a montage with every other misstep until the end of time. Just ask Dan Quayle how much he would like to have the letter “e” back when spelling the word potato from back in his VP days.

 

The best move Palin can make now is to appear bigger than all this and add stature. My advice would be to accept Letterman’s offer to appear on his show, state her case clearly, succinctly, graciously accept his apology and move on. The red meat has been thrown to her base, it is now time to grow that base. Spend the next two years picking her spots and studying foreign affairs and the economy. Republicans are historically much more pragmatic about their presidential nominee than Democrats. Palin won’t escape the primary in 2012 if she doesn’t find a way to broaden her appeal before then.     

 

Next week:  TV: we’re not dead yet!

HOW TO PITCH A STORY

 

With a foot in both news and entertainment, I frequently find myself getting “pitched” story ideas. In my opinion, good stories contain the same elements – regardless of the genre.

 

Why is it two such simple things as a red team and a blue team running into each other on a lighted box on the wall will, on the most biological level, draw our eye? In his seminal work Understanding Media, Marshall McLuhan describes TV as the ultimate “cool” medium.  As such, the best television frequently involves generating heat. Which explains why football, war and reality television make “good” TV. Add to that conflict, competition, and a compelling storyline and you will create a gut level connection to viewers. If these elements are not present, look to add them. Such things as competition and time pressure are common artificially added components in TV.

 

Probably the least of the most effective ways to get on TV is to have a human-interest component. Better suited to longer format programming, this works ultimately because every good story has an element of conflict, be it man vs man, or nature, or himself. Since these stories contain more nuances, they take more time to tell. Most movies end happily, but take two hours to get there. Further, character development is crucial to sucking the viewer in and giving them a reason to care.  Charity events, stories of extraordinary human achievement and the like will work, but if you are looking to get news coverage, aim these stories at weekend coverage and the lifestyle section of the paper when the news hole is typically larger and less demanding.

 

Finally, a good pitch requires something in writing - keep it brief - a page or less. Follow the 5 W’s and 1 H: who, what, why, where, when and how.  Any combination of email, fax, mailing or web site can be effective. Condensing it to one-page forces the person making the pitch to focus making the project that much easier to understand and therefore sell.

 

 

 

Next week, why SARAH PALIN can’t win….