(By Randy Lane) One of the top complaints we hear from talent about management is that their program director hauls them into a daily show critique meeting. This is a legitimate beef for most shows.
There are situations where daily show meetings are needed and can be productive. We’ll get to that shortly. First, over-coaching tends to make talent overthink everything, leading to lower performance. Second, long daily meetings take up valuable prep time. Third, talent does not have time to work on and implement the coaching points.
One exception to meeting daily with management is when they have on-air expertise (e.g. former show host) and participate in planning the next show versus critiquing it.
It is a good practice for management to say hello to talent daily and briefly mention something positive that happened on the show. Avoid platitudes, be genuine, and specific with any feedback.
Daily management meetings with talent are valuable in these situations:
• New shows for the first few weeks.
• A new player is added to the show or a player leaves the show.
• When there’s so much dysfunction that a mediator is necessary to keep peace.
The daily check-in and weekly show review and planning sessions are the best practices for most shows.
