Hurd to '60 Minutes:' I'm ready!

I was covering HP CEO/chairman Mark Hurd's keynote at Oracle OpenWorld Nov. 12, 2007, and looked up from my notebook when Hurd said he was going to "take a risk."
Hurd, the able and competent, yet media-averse head of Hewlett-Packard, has eschewed interaction with the media in his two-and-a-half years on the job. So this sounded encouraging.
PR thugs ran interference against this reporter trying to question Hurd after a keynote address at the HP Technology Forum in Houston in 2006.
And a few weeks later, Hurd presided at a news conference at HP's Palo Alto headquarters at which he made prepared remarks and then ducked behind a black curtain. Reporters were instructed to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
Okay, both these media interactions happened while HP was reeling from the still unfolding "Pretexting Scandal," in which HP higher-ups authorized spying to see which board members were leaking to the media. I can't tell you how many times I wrote the phrase, "used false pretenses to obtain the calling records of HP directors, employees and journalists who cover the company" during those few months.
But a year had passed, the story had faded, HP continues to chug along, passing IBM as the world's largest technology company. Maybe Hurd decided he can relax and open up.
So at Oracle OpenWorld Hurd says, "I'm taking a risk," by answering videotaped questions of convention attendees from just before his keynote. "I have not seen these questions in advance," he assured us.
Well, while he may not have seen them in advance, that doesn't mean they weren't prescreened by persons with his interests at heart, weren't scripted and weren't softball.
"What is the role of IT in business?"
"How is HP delivering on the promise of the next-generation data center?"
And, the crowd's favorite:
"Should I buy Dell or HP?"
Aside from the hilarity of Michael Dell's cameo there (just kidding), the keynote had all the spontaneity and honesty of a Bush-Cheney town hall meeting, or of a Hillary Clinton event, depending on which side you're on.
But why should I be surprised? The reason any company executive makes their convention address on a stage is so it can be stage-managed. Some of the convention keynotes I've covered over the years adopt production values like those of a Broadway show.
But some execs follow their stage performance with a real Q&A with reporters afterwards. C'mon, Mark, give it a try.