Print, TV and radio interviews: what changes for you

By Alastair Greener, presenter of Present Yourself in a Minute · Updated 5 November 2026

A print interview gives the audience your words and nothing else. A radio interview gives them your voice and nothing else. A television interview gives them all of you. That is the whole difference, and every adjustment in this guide follows from it. Your message, the one thing you want remembered, stays the same in all three. What changes is how much of the job rests on your sentences, your voice and your face.

If you are choosing how to say yes to a request, start with the questions to ask before you agree to a media interview. If you already know the format, read on.

The three formats side by side

Whatever the format, decide your message first. If you cannot say it in one sentence, no delivery will rescue it. The stick of rock test is a quick way to check that everything you plan to say points back to it, and the ABC technique shows how to return to it when the questions drift.

Print: your words have to survive being cut

A journalist who interviews you for half an hour will use a few lines. You will not see which. The quotes are chosen after you leave, and you rarely see the piece before it appears, so the only control you have is what you say.

• Say the line you want quoted early, and more than once. Put it in a sentence that makes sense on its own, with no "as I said earlier" and no reliance on the question that came before.
• Keep sentences short. A long answer where every sentence leans on the last gives the writer a choice, and they will pick the sentence that makes their story work.
• Say numbers and names slowly, and spell anything unusual. A wrong figure in print stays wrong. Offer to send the figure in an email afterwards.
• Agree the ground rules before you start. Assume you are on the record from the first word unless you and the journalist have agreed otherwise in advance. Saying "that was off the record" after the sentence is out does not undo it.
• Do not fill silences. Journalists leave a gap because people tend to talk into it. Finish your answer and stop.
• Ask what the piece is, who reads it and when it runs. A trade title and a national paper need different answers to the same question.

Print gives you the most thinking time. You can often ask for a question to be repeated, take a moment, or offer to check a fact and come back. Use that. It is the format where a measured answer costs you least.

Radio: your voice has to do all the work

On radio nobody can see you nod, smile or point to a chart. If the voice is flat, the listener hears someone who does not care. If it is rushed, they hear someone who is nervous. Nerves speed most people up, and a pace that feels right in your own head is usually too fast on air. Slow down more than seems natural, then use pauses before and after the points that matter.

Preparing your voice is part of the job, in the same way a presenter prepares theirs:

• Warm up 10 to 20 minutes before. Loosen your shoulders, neck and jaw, hum, and run through a few tongue twisters. They wake up your mouth as well as your voice.
• Drink room-temperature water. Ice-cold and fizzy drinks are the wrong choice for your voice. A small snack beforehand is fine; chocolate is not a good idea.
• Smile before you speak. A smile changes the sound, and listeners can hear it.
• Vary your tone, pace and volume. A monotone is the usual result of reading from a script. Speak from a few keywords instead.
• Keep notes to a single page of keywords. Rustling paper is loud on a microphone. A page you can see without touching is safer.
• Use pictures. The audience cannot see your slide or your product, so describe it. A small story with a person in it usually lands better than a statistic.

Ask the producer where to sit and how far from the microphone, then keep that distance steady. If the interview is down the line, you will be in one place and the presenter in another. You will hear them through an earpiece with a small delay. Wait out that delay before you answer, or you will talk over them. Interview formats explained covers live, as-live, pre-recorded and down-the-line so you know which you are facing.

TV: everything is on show

Television is the only one of the three where the audience can see you disagree with your own words. If your voice says confident and your hands say otherwise, viewers tend to believe the hands. Tone, body language and message have to match.

Eye line. In a studio or on location with a presenter, look at the presenter, as you would in conversation. If you are down the line or recording straight to camera, look at the lens and keep looking at it, even when the face on your screen is more interesting. Treat the lens as a person you like.

The wide shot is always on. When someone else is speaking, you are probably still in the picture. Keep listening visibly. Do not check your phone, slump or look relieved. This matters most on panels.

Posture. Sit upright with both feet on the floor and your weight even, and lean in slightly when you want to make a point. Fidgeting, swaying and pacing show nerves, so keep still and move only on purpose.

Hands. Use them, because gesture puts energy into your voice. Keep them either fully in the frame or fully out. A hand that drifts in and out at the edge is distracting. Hands on camera explains it in detail.

Face. On a close shot your face is all they have. Let your expression show what you mean, a little more than you would in a room. Smile when it fits, and look at the person asking.

Clothes. Avoid small checks and narrow stripes, which can shimmer on screen, and avoid the colour of the backdrop. Ask the producer what is behind you. What to wear on camera goes through colours and fabrics.

Light. Face the main light, not a window behind you. At home or in the office, put the light in front and slightly above. A well-lit face in front of a plain wall beats a grand bookcase in shadow.

Autocue. If you record to camera from a script, how to read an autocue without looking like you are reading will save you.

How to practise for each

You can rehearse all three at your desk, and each rehearsal tests something different.

1. Print: write it down. Type out your three best answers as if they were quotes. Read each one alone. If any needs the question or a previous sentence to make sense, rewrite it.
2. Radio: record audio only. Answer ten likely questions out loud, play them back without video and listen for pace, fillers and flat patches. Replace each "um" with a pause.
3. TV: record video, then watch with the sound off. You will see what a viewer sees before they hear a word: hands, eye line, face, posture. Then watch with sound and compare.

Do each rehearsal in real time and out loud. An answer that reads well in your head often runs out of breath halfway through the second sentence.

A worked example

Take an invented director of a small charity, launching a new helpline, whose message is "Nobody has to wait a week to speak to someone."

• Print: "Nobody has to wait a week to speak to someone. Since we opened the new line, a caller who rings before noon gets a call back the same day." Short, self-contained, and a quote the writer can lift whole.
• Radio: the same two sentences, but slowed down, with a pause after "someone". She adds a picture: "Think of the person who has plucked up the courage to ring on a Tuesday. They shouldn't have to wait until the following Tuesday." She keeps her notes to three words on one page.
• TV: the same words again, now delivered to the presenter with her shoulders level, both hands visible when she makes the point and still when she does not. She wears a plain mid-tone jacket and not the spotty scarf. When the presenter turns to the other guest, she keeps listening.

The message is identical. Only the delivery changed.

Common mistakes

• Preparing one set of answers for every format. A script that works in print sounds written on radio and stiff on TV.
• Treating radio as easy because nobody sees you. The voice is the whole performance, and it needs a warm-up like any other.
• Looking at the wrong thing on TV. Eyes that wander between the screen, the lens and the floor look evasive.
• Rushing. It is the most common fault in every format, and nerves are the cause.
• Saying things you would not want quoted, because the notebook is shut or the red light is off. Assume everything counts.
• Never watching yourself back. Habits only become visible on playback.

Media training days at the barn take place in a working studio, with a real earpiece and cameras, so the first time you hear a producer counting you in is a rehearsal. The media training studio page has the detail. What happens in a media training day sets out the hours. For the two kinds of request you might receive, read reactive or proactive: two kinds of media interview.

Related guides

• The ABC technique: acknowledge, bridge, communicate
• Reactive or proactive: two kinds of media interview
• All guides and tools

The picture at the top of this page is an illustration, not a photograph of a client or a real job.