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Star on radio and TV
Dr Neil deGrasse Tyson
Host of NOVA scienceNOW and director of the Hayden Planetarium, New York; USA
The first time I was ever interviewed for national television it was on NBC Nightly News and there was a page one story about the discovery of the first planet revolving round another star. It was 1995 and I was brand new as Director of the Hayden Planetarium and I'm fundamentally an academic - that is how I think, how I behave. I was facing the cameras and they wanted to know how we discover these planets. I gave my best "professorial reply" and during the course of the interview I got up to show how a star "jiggles" because of the presence of planet around it. They did not use any of my "professorial reply" On the news that night was my hips, doing a jiggle!
So, I realised that if I want to play in the media universe, I'm going to have to learn to speak in sound-bytes. I practices in front of a mirror until I could come up with a two or three sentence sound-byte on just about any topic journalists are likely to ask about. I loaded up with sound-bytes and every next time the cameras came back and they asked a question, out came a sound-byte - an "un-editable" sound-byte! When I started doing that, they started beating a path to my door! I've made an effort to speak their language. I started valuing it and investing my own energy to become better at it.
If a journalist comes to my lecture room, they will hear me lecture. But, if I go in front of the cameras, I have to play according to their rules.
Watch an interview with Neil Tyson (and see how he does the star jiggle!) (Go straight to clip 5.)
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