Here’s What Bookers Go Through

The interviewers get all the credit, but the bookers are the ones who have to arrange cars, put up with divas in some cases, do some handholding for high-maintenance guests, make sure all the green M&M’s are out of the green room dish, and know what the fine line is between being aggressive in pursuing a guest and risking being served with a restraining order. 

TV Week has a good run-down of some of the personalities producers deal with every moment of their working lives. Nuggets like:

The hardest to get:

Leading vote-getter: Vice President Dick Cheney. “He doesn’t give a s***. He’s checked out,” said one respondent. “I don’t know what he does all day,” said another.

Plays hardest to get:

Leading vote-getter: Former Clinton White House aide Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., once more visible on newsmaker shows and now “always uses the family excuse” to avoid appearing and stay behind the scenes. (“He is playing an inside game, not an outside game.”)

Also mentioned: Mr. (Howard) Dean (until late April); Sen. Kerry and Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass. (“You have to go through this long, arduous process.”); some surrogates.

Leaves their best stuff in the green room:

Leading vote-getters: Senators “jockeying for position.” “They all do.”

Also mentioned: Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah; former presidential candidate New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (“He talks a good game and then thinks better of it on camera.”); Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic candidate John Edwards.

Highest maintenance:

Leading vote-getters: Rudolph Giuliani (“Is [wife] Judith coming or is she not coming?”); Rep. Pelosi (“won’t come to the studio,” “wants the grandeur of her Speaker’s office,” “the queen-spare me”).

Also mentioned: Mr. (Ralph) Nader (“bizarre,” “won’t be picked up at home”); Gov. Romney

Easiest to deal with:

Leading vote-getter: Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., is “always very accommodating.”

Also mentioned: “People who have been around for a long time,” including Sen. Biden, Rep. Charles Rangell, D-N.Y.; Sen. Dodd; Sen. Specter (“He comes on and makes his point,” “always interesting”); and Gov. Huckabee (“very low-key,” traveling often with “only a one-person entourage even as candidate”).

A quick survey of one of my producers says this is all mostly true.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.