Tiger Woods made a public statement of apology regarding his extramarital affairs on ABC’s 20/20 news program on Friday (see the story and clip). The segment included analysis about Tiger’s appearance, sincerity, and even discussed what it would mean if he had cried while delivering the statement, and what it meant that he hadn’t.
Before I continue, I need to make one thing clear: I think it’s ridiculous that we are devoting national primetime news coverage to stories about celebrity scandal – not to mention placement as the headline story. American troop numbers are at an all-time low in Iraq, anyone care to report? That said…
It is a known fact in the profession of Public Relations that you (the PR practitioner) want to deliver bad news to the public as late as possible in the work week (Monday-Friday). Friday night is the optimal time, because news delivered will not be rehashed in the morning news, as weekends have different programming, and will be unlikely to still be as newsworthy (or worthy of as much coverage) by news programs by Monday morning.
So good job Tiger, hiring people who can actually do damage control.
The "Take out the Trash" day is what you are referring to. Tiger Woods most definitely has a fantastic crises communication's team and having Woods come out and speak on Friday made his statements downplayed in the media. I wasn't able to catch Woods' statements and it seemed weird that most of the media didn't go into a huge surge of analysis.
ReplyDeleteI also cannot stand that celebrity's personal lives are my headline news. News in general is becoming too much of an entertainment platform and not enough of doing what they say they're supposed to be doing - reporting the news. Unless there's some very prevalent issue at the time, or a breaking story, I feel like a lot of the news I see is what restaurants they found rats in or some valet parking scam I'm not going to ever fall for.
ReplyDeleteBut I think most of what I'm complaining about is on network news - cable news outlets often do what they're supposed to, but networks are trying to get ratings. And when your news show is up against another network's news show, sometimes people are more likely to see what restaurants have rats than what new bill is being passed. It's just as much our fault for wanting to hear the bullshit as it is theirs for giving it to us.