Chris Bendall, Producer, Channel 9 TODAY show

Straight from the producers mouth to a PR campaign near you... we were lucky enough to catch up with Chris Bendall, a producer on Australia's Channel 9 breakfast program TODAY. Diane Falzon for media monitoring company www.slicemedia.com.au, asked him the following questions: -Where do you source the majority of your stories from? -What makes a good press release into a great press release? -Is it important for a PR practitioner to approach TV producers with a plethora of ideas/angles or to present the bare bones and allow the TV producer to create the story? -How should a publicist proceed with a cold call to a producer for a story pitch. -What are your top three tips to a publicist in making the pitch more enticing to the producer? -What puts a producer off immediately from a publicist who delivers a bad pitch? -What are the three key ingredients to a great story pitch? -Is a telephone pitch better than an email pitch? -How is relationship building an important element to succeeding in TV? -What differentiates strategic publicists to stalking publicists? -What has been your worst experience with a publicist? -What does a publicist need to do to make a producer’s job easier? -Has the ‘pitch’ changed over the years? If so, how and is it for the better

Tracking the media, monitoring the message