Scott Steinberg · Trends Expert, Futurist and Keynote Speaker
Top satellite media tour companies know that an SMT, VMT or radio tour succeeds or fails on the person in the chair. Stations book the segment because the guest can carry a conversation an anchor wants to have, and they drop it when the guest reads as an advertisement. The host of dozens of SMTs, and hailed as a 21st Century Icon, Scott Steinberg is a celebrity keynote speaker, futurist trends expert and regular contributor to networks like ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC who books because producers already know the name.
SMT hosting and spokesperson work across areas like technology, video games, travel, consumer packaged goods (CPG), business, health, lifestyle, AI, toys and finance, with a knack for knowing what audiences want to see on live television.
Producers book segments that serve their audience, so the category and the angle matter more than the client. The categories below are ones where the credential is already established.
Technology segments book well because stations always need someone who can explain a product without sounding like a manual or a commercial.
This is the home category: two decades of covering consumer technology for national outlets, which means producers recognise the credential before the booking call ends.
Travel segments run on timing and usefulness: booking windows, seasonal planning, value angles and what a viewer can act on this week.
Tours cover destinations, travel brands, booking platforms and the seasonal peaks stations plan their calendars around.
CPG tours need an angle beyond the product, because a station will not book a segment that is only a product. Trend framing, seasonal relevance or a genuine consumer benefit carries it.
Tours cover launches, seasonal campaigns and category storytelling for food, beverage, household and personal care brands.
Business segments work on relevance to a viewer's own working life, whether that is workplace change, small business pressure or economic conditions they are feeling.
Tours cover workplace trends, small business topics and business technology for corporate and association clients.
Health segments carry an extra responsibility, and stations are appropriately careful about who they put on air discussing them.
Tours cover wellness technology, consumer health products and lifestyle health topics, with medical claims left to appropriately credentialed spokespeople.
Lifestyle bookings depend on segments that feel like service journalism rather than promotion, which is a question of framing more than content.
Tours cover home and living, family and parenting topics, entertaining and seasonal lifestyle campaigns.
Finance segments earn their place by being genuinely useful to a viewer making a decision, and stations run them year-round with predictable seasonal peaks.
Tours cover consumer finance topics, financial technology and money management for financial brands and institutions.
Seasonal tours are the busiest and most competitive part of the calendar, and stations fill those slots early with guests they have booked before.
Tours cover holiday gift and shopping segments, back-to-school, summer planning and the seasonal peaks brands build campaigns around.
Format follows the campaign rather than the other way around. A national product launch and a seasonal editorial angle need very different tours.
A full tour day of back-to-back station interviews, typically fifteen to thirty segments across morning and midday news.
Audio-only tours reaching drive-time and syndicated programming, run standalone or paired with a television day.
Broadcast segments alongside social and digital deliverables cut from the same production day.
Delivered from a studio, on location at an event or launch, or remotely where the campaign calls for it.
Scott Steinberg is futurist keynote speaker, strategy consultant and future trends expert with nearly 30 years of experience advising more than 3,000 businesses and brands, from startups to government agencies and Fortune 500 firms.
He is the author of over 30 books and has published more than five thousand articles covering technology, marketing, leadership, innovation, advertising and digital transformation. He appears regularly on ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC.
He has served as a thought leader for organizations like Amazon, Facebook, Mastercard, IBM, Ford, Dell and Procter & Gamble, and has been recognized by the International Association for Scholastic Excellence, Fortune and the 21st Century Icon Awards.
Carries the same message through fifteen to thirty consecutive live interviews without it sounding rehearsed on the twentieth, adapts to whatever each anchor wants to talk about, and stays inside the client's message while giving stations a segment worth airing.
Stations book people, not campaigns. A producer deciding whether to fill a slot is weighing whether the guest will serve their audience, and a recognised name with existing national credits clears that bar in a way an unfamiliar spokesperson does not.
Technology and consumer electronics, toys, travel, CPG, video games, AI, IT, business and workplace, health and wellness, lifestyle and home, personal finance, travel, hospitality, and seasonal campaigns.
Both. Many bookings come through SMT production companies and agencies who handle the satellite time, station outreach and booking, with hosting supplied separately. Direct brand engagements work too where the production is already arranged.
For most categories a few weeks is workable. Seasonal and holiday windows fill considerably earlier, and those slots are contested, so campaigns targeting them should lock a host well before the station outreach begins.
Share your tour date, category, target markets and the message you need carried. Availability, fit and approach can usually be confirmed quickly.
Tour date and window, category, target market list, whether the tour is single-brand or co-op, and the core message. Pre-tour briefing calls are standard and included.