The other day we were contacted by a TV show called *I'll not say their name here* about taking part in a story about emerging trends in information security management. It sounded legitimate enough so we set up a confernce call with a "producer" to figure out if we were a good fit for the story. Conference call day came and we basically did what I would consider a normal pre-interview. Lots of questions about our qualifications and background plus what we thought about the story's intended subject matter. Everything went well so we moved on the second part of the call. The second part I'll affectionately refer to as "the pitch".

The pitch went like this, "We are a third party television producer with affiliations with global television networks", he then went on to talk about all the exposure we would get. Again it all sounded great! Then he go to the part I wasn't expecting, production costs. I've done quite a few interviews over the years and none have ever discussed production costs. The producer went on to explain that most of their production costs are covered by their partners and advertising revenue but that they also get help from their "story partners". This was a term I'd never heard before. I almost fell out of my chair when he said the fee was nearly $20,000 (actually it was a very random sounding number but very close to $20k).

Basically I get to provide all the content for this story which amounted to about 5 minutes to be shown on some cable networks during "regional" commercial breaks. It may or may not result in any added value to my business and it would only cost me almost $20,000. Where do I sign up?!? Essentially this was a very cleverly disguised sales pitch and I pride myself on being able to spot this sort of thing but was utterly fooled until the very end. The assistant that set up the call never mentioned anything other than it being a TV show and the producer mentioned nothing about a fee until the very end. Beware of this sort of thing as it probably will end badly and there is a lot more you can do to advertise your business with $20k that will add value.