Letters of Recommendation

I've noticed a new trend over the past year. More guests are asking me, as a producer and host of a talk show, for letters of recommendation right after their interview airs. I think they use these to pitch to other media outlets or to post on their websites.

If the guest is terrific, amazing, wonderful, fantastic... I don't mind taking the time to do this. Keep in mind, though, that just in the last 18 months, I have interviewed about 3200 guests. That's not counting all the news interviews I did in the 20+ years before that. So by now, it takes a lot to stand out from the crowd.

Time is the challenge for me. First, if I write a recommendation, I want it to be a good one, and that means putting thought into it. Second, the way our office is set up, a short email response is much more convenient. But some guests have insisted on a letter on our station's letterhead. To me, this is asking a lot. It takes more time to find letterhead, go down the hall to the printer, tell all my office mates not to print... get the letter printed correctly, find an envelope... you get the idea. Keep in mind, I'm preparing for as many as nine guests a day, reading books that many of these guests have written, or researching them... and booking future guests. Time is already at a premium.

Here's what I would suggest. Send an email (or have your publicist do it for you) asking the host/producer/guest scheduler how the interview went and if there are suggestions for improvement. If the response is, "She was awesome! We'd love to have her back sometime!" then the chances of getting a glowing recommendation are good. If there is a less than enthusiastic response or more than one suggestion for improvement, the interview may not have gone as well as you thought it did. So don't even ask for a recommendation.

And if someone goes to the trouble (and yes, it's trouble--we have no spare time) to write a recommendation, thank them profusely!