What actually happens in a media training day
People arrive expecting a seminar and are surprised to find themselves on camera before lunch. Here is how a day is structured, why it is built that way, and what changes between your first practice interview and your last.
In short: A media training day runs roughly 9.30 to 4.30 and is built around repetition: short briefing, then practice interviews on camera, immediate playback, feedback, and repeat. Most people do three or four recorded interviews of increasing difficulty. You take home the recordings and a clear picture of your own habits.
You will be on camera before the coffee is cold.
The single most common disappointment with media training is a day that never quite gets round to the training. Slides about message discipline, a discussion of the media landscape, a worked example, lunch, and everyone leaves having practised nothing.
A day that works is mostly you, on camera, being asked questions you would rather avoid, and then watching yourself answer them. Everything else is scaffolding around that loop.
Morning
Around 9.30, a short briefing. Twenty to thirty minutes, not two hours. What the journalist is trying to get, what you are trying to say, and how those two things are usually not in conflict but occasionally are. Your key messages get written down and stuck on the wall where you can see them, which is the last time you will be allowed to look at them.
Then the first interview. Deliberately early and deliberately gentle. Three or four minutes, straightforward questions, cameras rolling. Its purpose is not to catch you out. Its purpose is to produce a recording of how you speak when you think you are doing fine.
Then you watch it back. This is the part nobody enjoys and everybody needs. On a big screen with proper sound, the habits are obvious in a way they never are in the moment: the sentence that starts three times before it commits, the phrase you use to buy thinking time, the way your hands stop moving when you are unsure. Most people find one verbal tic and one physical one they did not know they had.
Second interview, harder. Now with an earpiece. The questions get more pointed and, more importantly, the conditions get more realistic. You are hearing the interviewer in one ear rather than seeing them across a table, which is how a live down-the-line interview actually feels and which throws almost everyone the first time.
The earpiece, and why it is the whole point
Ask people who have done a live interview what went wrong and they rarely blame the questions. They describe hearing the presenter on a slight delay, losing the thread of a sentence they had rehearsed dozens of times, and having no idea whether they were still on air.
Broadcast studios manage this with a mix-minus feed, which sends the programme audio to the guest with their own voice removed. When it is set up correctly you hear the presenter and not yourself. When it is set up badly, your own voice comes back to you a fraction of a second late, and speaking through that is genuinely difficult.
Training in a meeting room cannot reproduce any of this, so it rehearses the answers and leaves the delivery untested. In this studio we can put a real earpiece on you, feed you a trainer who is not in the room, and if it is useful, deliberately give you a bad line so you know what one feels like before it happens for real.
Afternoon
The difficult one. After lunch, the interview built around the question you least wanted to be asked. You will have supplied it yourself in the morning, which somehow does not make it easier. This is usually the most valuable fifteen minutes of the day.
Playback, then again. By the third or fourth round most people have stopped noticing the cameras, which is when the actual improvement shows up. The bridge from an awkward question back to your own message stops sounding like a manoeuvre and starts sounding like an answer.
Format practice, if you need it. A down-the-line broadcast hit, a long-form podcast appearance and a conference panel are three different skills. If your team is far more likely to face one than the others, the last part of the day is spent there rather than covering all three lightly.
A short wrap. What to do in the twenty minutes before an interview, how to handle the pre-interview chat with a producer, and what to say when you genuinely cannot answer something.
What you leave with
Every recording
All practice interviews on three 4K cameras with broadcast sound, handed over. Watching the first and last back to back is the clearest evidence of what changed.
Your own habits, named
Once you have seen a tic on a big screen you cannot unsee it, which turns out to be the most durable part of the training.
Messages that survive contact
Three key points that still hold up after someone has spent a day trying to knock you off them.
Four to six people is the sensible maximum for a day where everyone gets real camera time. More than that and the loop breaks down, and we would rather say so in advance.
Booking one
We supply the studio, the broadcast rig and the crew. The session is run by Hilary Jeffs of Jawsmith, who has been training executives, Cabinet Ministers and spokespeople since 2006, and who already records her weekly podcast in this room. Jawsmith also runs select committee preparation and full crisis simulations, both of which use the studio harder than a standard day does. If you have a trainer of your own you would rather use, the facility hires on its own.
For budgeting, see what media training costs in the UK. For the kit and the room, see the media training studio. If what you actually need is to appear on someone else's programme rather than practise for it, that is the remote interview studio.
Ready when you are
Availability and a firm quote, usually same day. No pressure, no hard sell.
Questions we get asked
Will I be on camera?
Yes, repeatedly, and usually within the first hour. A day spent discussing interview technique without doing any interviews does not change how anyone performs. Expect to be recorded, watch it back, and go again.
Is it uncomfortable?
The first round usually is. That is deliberate and it is also the point: it is far better to be caught out by a difficult question in a studio than by the same question on air. By the third round most people have stopped noticing the cameras.
What should I prepare beforehand?
Your three key messages and the two questions you least want to be asked. Bring both honestly. A trainer who does not know your worst question cannot help you answer it.
What do I take away?
The recordings of every practice interview, and a much clearer sense of your own habits. Most people discover one verbal tic and one physical one they had no idea about.
How long is the day?
Typically 9.30 to 4.30 with a break for lunch. Shorter than that and the repetition suffers, which is where the value is.
What if I am terrible at the start?
Almost everyone is. Watching your first attempt back is the least enjoyable part of the day and the most useful. The gap between the first and last recording is the thing you are paying for.
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