Last week, I received a voice mail from a major news network wanting to chat with me about a possible interview on HR technology and small business for one of their business shows. Needless to say, I was very excited when I heard the voicemail. Who wouldn’t be? My wife was even more excited about it than I. Before returning the voicemail, we decided to go to lunch. Truthfully, I just wanted to calm down a little before making the call.
Over lunch, I trivialized the whole thing. It was not a big deal because I doubted that many HR professionals would watch the show. Once I began to think rationally about the whole thing, I determined that the only benefit was a boost for my ego, which is not needed. Even if I made an idiot of myself it was doubtful that anyone I knew would actually be watching the show.
I got back to the office and immediately made the return call. I spoke with the producer of the show who started to tell me a little about the program and then he asked for additional information about my background. He said one of his researchers had come across Clay’s Rants and found it interesting. How ironic considering that now they are featured in Clay’s Rants. At one point, he sort of snuck in that there would be money involved with the whole thing. I was honestly wondering how much they were going to pay me.
Finally, I stopped the guy and asked outright “Money; how much and to whom?” I was told that for $4,900 for 90 seconds my website could be plugged on the show. I would not be interviewed and the script would have to be pre-approved. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? That’s $54.44 per second. Look, I get it that when you watch a movie and someone is slurping a Diet Coke, Coke paid for that advertisement. When the winning QB after the Super Bowl says he’s going to Disney, I get that as well but does this really happen on ‘news’ programs? Sorry, but I think when news programs work in paid plugs, it destroys their credibility. Oops, what am I saying? Very few of any of today’s news networks appear to have any credibility because of the blatant bias that is reflected.
So, you are probably wondering why I did not mention the network. Well, let me just say I’m a guy who learns from his mistakes. Earlier this year I was interviewed by HR Magazine about open source HRIS systems. The interviewer told me he was looking for an opposition view and I provided one. Then I was barely quoted in the article and when I was, they misspelled my name and mislabeled my profession. I wrote sort of a nasty Clay’s Rant on the whole matter and have never been asked for an interview since. I was not going to take that chance again so I decided to leave the news network’s name out of this rant. Just in case they might want to interview me some day for my knowledge insight and experience as opposed to $4,900.
Unfortunately, I have found sometimes rants have consequences.