If you’re a football fan, you’ll completely understand where this blog post is headed. And even if you’re not, you’ll still get the picture. Every football coach and player will tell you there is one very key element that helps them do their job well each week. You can have the most talent on the team and possess a skill set that sets you apart from the rest of your competition, but if you don’t prepare with these two little words, you won’t have success.

Film study.

Just like The One Minute Entrepreneur tells us, preparation is key. The difference between success and failure for any football player – and team – is that they take the time to study their opponent on film in the week leading up to each game. So what does this have to do with PR? You could say everything.

If your small business has a hot story that you know would be appealing to a producer or reporter at a television station – local or national – you can call them up and pitch them. And you’ll quickly realize that if you haven’t done your homework on that particular reporter at that station or network, that pitch call will be a one-person conversation faster than you can say dejection.

The best PR professionals take the time to study each different reporter and television station/network so that they can target their story pitches with great precision. We spend hours and hours studying, and often times I feel like a football player walking out of the team headquarters with all kinds of knowledge. I get a great understanding of what my reporter covers, the type of stories the station likes to run, if there are special segments on any of the newscasts or shows, and on what day.

The majority of readers of this blog are small business owners and entrepreneurs. I get that you probably don’t have time to do this kind of preparation for your stories. But that’s no excuse to call with a bad, unprepared pitch. I’ll give you a few tips how to cram the same preparation in a much more condensed time frame. But to be successful here, you must have DVR or TiVo technology either at your office or home (and since prices are so low there is no excuse for not having this technology).

Once you’ve developed your story pitch (use the PR Toolkit to help with this), figure out which show you want to be on, whether it’s the local NBC news affiliate or the CBS Early Show. You must start with a target. Next, begin recording that show on your DVR. This will enable you to go home each night and take 15 or 20 minutes to zip through the day’s telecast. Study who the reporters are. Get to know their television persona a little bit. You’ll quickly realize that one reporter covers health stories while another one covers investigative or consumer stories. This is how you will know who you need to pitch your story to, which is key to understanding marketing opportunities. Read Working with the Media, which is a great resource that offers additional tips.

Next, figure out if there is a specific day of the week when the show runs certain segments. Some stations do food segments on every Wednesday, family stories each Thursday, and local weekend activity ideas each Friday, for example. Which day does your story fall under? Who is the reporter that most often does each story? What is their personality like (do they have lots of fun and interaction, or are they more businesslike and to the point in their reporting)?

Now go to the station’s Web site (simply Google NBC affiliate in Dallas, for example). Find the news team bios and read through all of them, including the reporter you think is the right one for your story. This is also a great shortcut if you’re targeting a station out of your area (and don’t have the ability to DVR their show). Also study the rest of their Web site since most stations now publish their stories online, too.

When you’ve done all of this homework, email the reporter with your story pitch (remember, your story must have a strong visual element). Most reporters love to hear from people with a juicy story tip, so feel free to call them up to talk about it. You can easily get the station phone number from Google (or sometimes it’s published on their Web site). Call the station and ask to speak with the reporter or the assignment desk. It’s also a good idea to ask if the reporter has a specific producer who works on his or her stories. You’ll want to run the story by the producer, too.

Here’s a tip: Reporters love to hear feedback on their stories. Once you’ve identified the right reporter for your story, email them every so often and tell them what you liked about a story they did. Don’t pitch them a thing, just comment on the story they did. Look them up and connect with them on Twitter, and other social media. This way you will build a little bit of a relationship before you pitch them. You’ll be amazed at what can happen when you pitch a story to a reporter you also have a rapport with.

This is just a taste of what kind of research goes into planning for a television story pitch. By following these steps you’ll be able to do your homework on a reporter and have plenty of time left over to run your business. Most importantly, though, you’ll have a much better chance at having success in landing a great story on television.