How To Give Out Your Phone Number

There's a wonderful show on the Bravo cable network called "Inside the Actors Studio." The Actors Studio is in New York, and it's a world-famous training ground for actors, writers and directors that began back in the 1950s. People such as Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Robert DeNiro and many others have honed their skills in this very unique environment.

Arthur Penn is its president, a great director with such movies as "Bonnie and Clyde" among his many credits, and he talked in one episode about a technique that he uses to visualize how the film will look. He lets the actors rehearse scenes while he walks around, looking at it from all different angles, sitting or standing in different places, and figuring out as he goes where to put the camera before one foot of film is shot -- because the camera decides what the perspective will be. The decision on where the camera goes reveals the director's point of view. (You don't want a wide shot when a crucial point is being made in the dialogue and a close-up is needed, for instance. Or you may want to show a group's reaction, rather than just one person's facial expression.)

And that's exactly the process that we should be using as we do show prep -- figuring out our "camera angle," the perspective we want to bring to the table on each subject with which we'll deal.

Just talking about something is only half the game. If the listener's going to really come to know you and bond with you, you have to have your camera angle. Over time, this is how you become special to your listener -- forming a personal relationship based on being self-revealing about things your listener cares about or is interested in.

In a team show, each person's camera angle is essential to the growth of the show. Bad teams are just the lead person's camera angle surrounded by people with no opinions -- "yes men" who bring nothing of their own to the discussion.

If you're the lead person, a big part of your job is to draw out the individual "takes" of the other members of your show, and sift through them, figuring out which ones to use. You then break up the content and your respective opinions into "bite size" pieces, so you're not trying to get everyone's take into every break (because trying to do everything every time makes things predictable and too lengthy), and make sure to leave room for listener feedback.

Much of my work with the 70+ team shows I've coached is in helping them develop the knack of figuring out "where to put the camera" and then orchestrate how to get it on the air in logical, episodic form.

The result is that the show magically fills up with content. Instead of struggling to find enough things to talk about, it becomes more of an editing process (a far easier way to go). And because it's not just random "topics" brought up with no actual emotional involvement, it sounds like REAL conversation. The more real you sound-the more it's like having breakfast with the listener, or a backyard barbeque or dinner party setting, where conversations among friends bind them together-the more your station loses the all-too-typical agenda of liner reading and mindless repetition and promotion, and becomes something more tangible and personal to the Listener.

Then you just watch your ratings grow.

Devote the next month to this. With every single thing you decide to talk about, think first about "where to put the camera." It'll redefine the focus of your show, FAST.