Host Your Own TV Show

Let’s first start with the most important calling card in the industry, and that’s your demo reel. A demo reel in the host world is an absolute MUST. If you don’t have a reel, as one casting director bluntly put it, “You’re not a host!” But the good news is they’re not that difficult or expensive to create. If you already have a reel this section will be a good review to make sure yours is edited correctly and has all the right material on it.

To create a host reel you need to do one of two things:

1) Hire a professional to edit your reel for you, OR
2) Find your own camera, an editor and use your own ingenuity

I personally love to go the professional route for several reasons. First, an unbiased evaluation of your material always helps because it forces you to hear what you’d likely hear from a casting director and audience anyway. If you do decide to take the professional route, one of the most important things you need to do is to get organized! When you hire a professional, you’re not merely giving them a bunch of DVDs and video files and saying, “Good luck!” You and the video professional work as a team, and your job on that team is to provide your current materials to them in an organized fashion. If you have 10 or 20 DVDs with a bunch of different material on them, you should go through them first. If possible, log these and provide time codes for all the material on each DVD that you think might be good reel material. If you don’t have the time to log all of them, at the very least make some notes pointing out the specific things on those DVDs that are good.

Before you get into producing and editing your reel, let’s address exactly what a HOST reel is. There are different types of reels – from news to industrials to acting – and each requires something specific. It’s not just a music video! A demo reel is all about you … this is your time, and it’s not about who you interviewed or what event you were at. Brian Rose of Brose Productions is one of the top host reel editors in the business, and he provided a great explanation:

“When being considered for a job, there is a small window of time to impress and capture your audience while also convincing them that YOU are the one for the job. If produced correctly, a demo reel can be both brief, yet powerful, and convey all of the talent’s strong points as well as highlight their distinctiveness and unsurpassed qualities. I look at each demo reel as a unique opportunity to visually express every one of my client’s talents.”

For a host reel, you first must know who you are and how you want people to perceive you as a host. Some good questions to ask yourself are:

What do you want to accomplish?
What’s your niche?
What you are good at?
Are you funny?
Are you excitable?
Are you insane?
What makes you stand out from others?
Why should I watch you?

Your personality, your opinion and your point-of-view equal your “brand” to the world watching. Nobody wants to watch a dull and boring personality. People want to buy brands they enjoy, and so do the networks. If you think about it, there are a million channels these days and so many opportunities for hosting gigs. They want to hire a person or a brand that is going to stand out and create some talk about themselves! Why do you think Mike Rowe has endorsements from the Ford Motor Company and Lee Jeans? Why do you think Rachel Ray has tons of endorsements with food related companies? Because people are talking about them ALL THE TIME! What’s your brand? Keep that question at the forefront of your mind.

What do you want the world to see you as?
The answer to this question will define your pathway. To give you a visual blueprint for what a good demo reel looks like, I’ve provided some great examples in each of the hosting genres on my website: www.timtialdo/resources

How long does it need to be?
This is usually the first thing most people ask when it comes to developing a host reel. It’s a great question, because while a news reel might be anywhere from 10 to 15 minutes, a host reel needs to be only 3 minutes in length, give or take 30 seconds. I interviewed well-known casting director and host coach Maureen Browne about what she likes to see on a reel, and this was her answer:

“I really want to see good stand-ups. If I’m looking in 30 seconds, I need to see that you know how to interview someone, that you have a really strong stand up and that you can really master reading copy. Interviewing someone, it doesn’t have to be a celebrity, but I want to know that you are present and listening to them instead of thinking about what the next question is that you need to be asking them, because that is HUGE! Those are the two most important things I want to see in 30 seconds and, of course, your personality.”

One of my favorite reels is of former QVC Shopping Host Kim Parrish. It’s under 3 minutes, it’s fast-paced, tells a great story and showcases exactly who Kim is and what she’s about. You can check it out on my website at www.timtialdo.com/resources. Remember, the host demo reel is all about showing off your personality, your style, your look and your swagger. In those 3 minutes, you want to make sure that no one segment is too long, so each clip should go for no more than 10 seconds.

Now some of you are saying, “Well that’s all good and fine, but I’ve got this great interview I did with so and so and the clip is 30 seconds.” OK, here’s how you handle that: You can do more than 10 seconds of an interview, but cut it up where you see bits and pieces throughout the 3 minutes rather than the whole interview clip straight. That way, if there’s some good interaction, personality and humor, you can sprinkle that across the reel to keep it fun and engaging.