On Thursday BBC Breakfast’s business presenter Steph McGovern and one of her team of three producers Rebecca Wearn entered the hot seat of a Gorkana Briefing.

The 30 minute event which took the form of a question and answer session with the great and the good of the Manchester PR scene, gave answer to some of the age old questions:

When’s best to contact you?

First thing the team are really busy (obviously), then they’re in meetings and in the afternoon they’re preparing for tomorrow’s show, as such there is no perfect time! Always remember the producers are busy, so it’s best with the phone call to be brief and just tell them to look out for an email rather than trying to brief them on the story/angle.

Who is the best person to contact?

There is always one producer working on the planning desk – this rotates each week – whose job is to focus on the week ahead.

As such it’s best to call and ask to speak to the Breakfast business planning desk and contact them directly if you are looking ahead. Alternatively if you have a story for tomorrow call and ask who is looking after that show. Ideally if your story is for the current week allow a two day turn around e.g. if the story is for Thursday sell it in on Tuesday.

The email address for the production team is:

[email protected]
The other two producers for the Business section – Louise Greenwood and Clare Matheson

Emailing

When emailing get the key points across in the top two lines and grab their attention as otherwise it will simply be deleted.

Speakers

The business team prefer to use average people such as business owners who can explain what the latest stats mean practically and can give good anecdotes etc. They are also keen to feature businesses which can show that it is not all doom and gloom and that they are doing well because for instance they export a lot of their products, this also means they are in a position to comment about what the eurozone crisis means etc.

The key for being a Breakfast regular is someone the audience can engage with and show’s personality think Seymour Taylor and his red braces! The other major failure for guests is that they can be  too focused on their own commercial message and try to mention it too often.

Hopefully this will give you a few pointers in how to approach BBC Breakfast however f you’d like to watch the full interview, you can here.