The post my mother told me not to write: ”Don’t piss off PR people…!” 

It’s election time, and as you can imagine, my email, which is aways full of guest pitches, is especially busy now. I know everyone is shorthanded these days and desperately paddling to keep their heads above water. 

Emails are time sucks, and take up an inordinate amount of everyone’s time, don’t they? I actually know an executive who used to receive 500 emails a day, and had three people assigned to do nothing other than sort through them. 

Fortunately my show is not guest-dependent, so I can be selective, but I really do like having really interesting people on. I evaluate them on a case-by-case basis. 

Here are some things that drive me crazy about guest pitches/PR people. 

• I currently have no producer/booker/help of any kind at the moment, which is not your problem, I realize, but because of it, things are likely to fall through the cracks. You have to make it simple. I don’t live on my phone. I strive for balance in my life. I simply have to decompress for my own mental health. I cannot and will not check my emails every few minutes, 15 hours a day, to see if you finally got back to me. 

• If I do respond to your pitch, please don’t ask me what time my show airs. I know I’m on some mailing list and you may not know me personally, but the showtimes are included in my email signature. If your client can never do those times because he’s in surgery or a late sleeper, or for whatever reason, occasionally I will record an interview later in the day, for something really good, but that interferes with my nap, and I get extra cranky. 

• If I have to go back and forth with you 20 times for a guest whose last name isn’t TRUMP, I’m out. The White House books guests with me all the time, which requires no more than four emails back and forth, MAX. That’s how those people got to that level. They’re efficient. 

• I have a lot of balls in the air, and a short attention span. I discuss an average of 60 topics a week. If we drag this on for a week or more, I will forget what your guest even wants to talk about, and probably lose interest. 

• In fairness, I’ve never been on that end of things, but it seems to me that you should know what your guest has available, so that if I give you a specific time, you can say yay or nay, right then. When I did have a guest booker, he knew which slots I had available before agreeing to book a guest.

I know some clients can be difficult and not get back to you about times and then blame YOU for not getting them booked. Especially ones with big egos. I feel your pain.

I’m just telling you what other hosts won’t. They’ll just ignore your emails and you’ll never know why. Then your clients won’t use you anymore because you can’t get them booked on decent shows. Even if it’s not your fault.

Heidi Harris