Models in media: Are tabloids, TV and casting shows harming your career?

How do we start with this topic? As a model agent, I always try to prepare our protégés as well as possible for the media world. Also on the question of whether media formats such as tabloids, TV and casting shows harm the career.As soon as you are in a model agency and have your first photos, tabloids write to you to get stories. Sounds tempting, but is it? Many models are drawn to the big stage. But you’re actually booked to make others look good. If you start to market yourself too much you will soon get into a process that you can’t stop yourself. Headlines don’t disappear.

Editorial photo © konradbak – fotolia.com

 

 

Media helps you market your name. But if you start too early, you’ll literally be “cannon fodder.” I’ll talk about why in this blog article.

Wow! My name in TV and tabloid journalism!

Tabloids are dangerous if you don’t know the rules of the game.

“Thank goodness I’m not like them!” Do you know this phrase from yourself when you read about D, E, F celebrities?

One wrong interview. A few questions you didn’t expect and your career can be over. That is, TV shows, TV formats and programs aim to create “stories”, “stories” and “headlines”. For productions, a good story usually consists of a very human, private story. If that doesn’t work, then you simply rely on a lot of naked skin and “sex”. If you want to work as a model for high-class clients later on, you can quickly burn your own reputation with many TV formats. Especially with high-priced advertising campaigns and commercials, clients scrutinize their performers very closely in advance of production.

If you search your name on Google and articles in German tabloid media appear first, you are quickly out and not “applicable” for the brand. High-priced brands represent exclusivity. If your face has been seen too often in TV shows, your market value drops quickly.

Tabloid newspapers want to produce headlines

Just like TV shows, it is very tempting for young people with less media experience to agree to a report or interview with a major media outlet. To get headlines, tabloid reporters will do anything. Questions will always be about your private life and your personal problems.

Tabloids thrive on fates, not success stories.

They’ll also do everything they can to make sure you don’t earn anything from the article. After all, “we’re a big media” and “you get coverage for your person”. Tabloids are a hot place. As an up-and-coming model, you should be very careful with requests from tabloid media. It’s best to always decline nicely if you don’t have an agency. If you have a modeling agent, just pass on the request. As a model, you should work to get serious media coverage, but in the context of “desirability” and “success”, not “victim”.Getting a headline in four-letter magazines isn’t hard. You just need to tell a personal, sad, emotional story.

Career building means abandonment and exclusivity. If you give away everything about yourself “so easily”, your market value is quickly far below.

Tabloid TV lives on big emotions

The supposedly fast rise fascinates (better “seduces”) many young talents every year. TV shows offer the opportunity to supposedly quickly and easily gain notoriety. But who really makes it and what happens after the TV show? Either nobody knows you after two months or you have an eternal stamp! Everyone will say, “oh, the one from”, “the one from”. You’ll get a few euros for that. 24-hour cameras. Emotional moments, arguments – everything will be broadcast.

The real success, the big money, is earned by the producers. For this you are filmed daily for weeks, on good and bad days. Hardly any participant has lasting success. All TV starlets burn out as quickly as they came. That a few of ten thousand candidates have long-term success is not a good sign. Every year new seasons are produced, your fame often does not last longer. Your life will henceforth only consist of getting back into the media. An eternal cycle. Especially for young people it is so important to stay on the ground and build a sustainable career. All those who did not make it, we have long forgotten. This should not happen to you!

Models are very professional people. They can organize themselves perfectly at a young age. When they travel abroad for the first time for agencies, they have to cope alone in a foreign, big city when they are only 16 or 17 and commute independently from casting to casting. No stress, no strife: You have to smile again as a model at every casting and act like it’s the first casting of the day. You spend a lot of time abroad in model shared flats. You share your apartment with four or five other models from all over the world. Everything is new, the language, the people, your agency and your clients. Nevertheless, agency models are professional, structured and very balanced! They are real models.

Model TV Casting Shows – powered by Emotions

Can you spontaneously list ten successful models from casting shows?

Because the topic is so important, directly another look at model TV castings. Maybe I’ll make the cover this year? No! Apart from the fact that 9990 out of 10000 contestants remain absolutely unknown, even the first ten will have no chance of international success, maybe one? Maybe.

The cameras are always with you: extreme situation

You are forced into a TV format that is designed to sell emotions. Emotions have to be aroused. As a participant of a show, you are therefore constantly accompanied by cameras. You live with the other participants in a very confined space. From early morning until late at night, there is always a camera team with you and an editor who plans the course of the show exactly. The first days everyone is still reserved. Then the pressure increases so much that automatically small differences escalate into big fights. Emotional moments, haircuts, tears. Shortly before the end you see your family again, skype with your boyfriend or read a personal letter from your mum aloud in front of an audience of millions.

Tears, arguments, emotions make for ratings.

Viewers only see a short montage every week. You have to endure every day. It’s in the contract. Each participant is put in a special light, whether it’s true or not. One is the “quarrelsome one”, then there is the “quiet one”, there is the one or other “bitch” and the one that nobody likes anyway. Editors design exciting situations that demand everything from the models. Every day, without a break. Emotions. Intrigue. Produce stress: Until the first one cries and the first heated argument breaks out. Many ex-candidates do not work as models anymore or have started studying or looked for a permanent job because of the few jobs. In every casting show there is always only one who succeeds, the production. All the others go comparatively empty-handed. And you? You will always be the girl of the casting show.

Conclusion on models in tabloids and TV media

Stay who you are and try to get ahead with what you can. If you’re really talented and do good work, you don’t need to be fleeced by certain headline-focused media for two or three weeks of fame. In the long run, you want to be recognized as a model and maybe move into acting later, not the jungle. You always have a choice.

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