Radio and television basics

Although all journalism should be a flow of information between the

journalist and the reader, listener or viewer, in the broadcast media it is of
vital importance that the reporter - through the newsreader or announcer -
actually speaks to the audience.

It may be that you are broadcasting to millions of people, but you must
write your story as if you are telling it to just one person. You should write
as if someone you know personally is listening. Picture a favourite uncle or
aunt, cousin or brother and imagine that you are speaking to him or her.

Your style must, therefore, be conversational and as far as possible simple.

Remember also that, unlike a newspaper story, your listeners or viewers

cannot go back on the bulletin to hear again something they have missed.
Nor can their eyes jump around within a story or a page searching for the
information they want. In broadcasting the words and sentences are heard
once only, one after the other, and all the information must be presented in
such a way that it is understandable straight away. This is often called a
linear flow of information because it goes in a line in one direction

You must help your listeners and viewers by presenting information

concisely and logically.

You must always remember that by switching on a radio or television set,

the listeners are inviting you into their homes, their workplaces and their
cars.

Write and speak as if you were talking to them as individuals, face-to-face.

In practice
You should remember all you have been told about writing the basic news
story. Be concise, up-to-date, stick to the main point, use the active voice,
don't start with quotes and don't overload.

KISS

Keep it short and simple. You should not try to get too much information
into any sentence. Although you use the inverted pyramid style of story
writing, you may only be able to use one or two concepts (ideas) per
sentence. You cannot get as much detail into a radio or television story as
you can into a newspaper story.

You cannot expect your listener to understand the Who? What? Where?
When? Why?and How? of a story all in the first paragraph or even the first
two paragraphs. Although as a good journalist you should not leave any
essential questions unanswered, you may find that it takes all the time
available for a single story to communicate only a few basic facts. It is often
said that you could put all the words in a ten minute radio bulletin on one
page of a newspaper.

Stick to one or two key points per sentence. No sentence should be longer
than 20 words, except in unusual circumstances. Just as a mother feeds a
child one spoonful at a time, allowing the child to swallow each spoonful
before taking the next, you should spoon feed your listener. Give them one
piece of information at a time so that it can be digested before the next
piece.

Where necessary, split a long and involved sentence into two or more
shorter clearer sentences, as you would in conversation.

Once you have reduced it to the bones of a headline, you can put some
flesh on it for radio and television. Don't forget though that, whereas
newspaper headlines can be incomplete sentences, without words like the
and a, radio and television news must be in complete sentences.
Look at the following example and notice how we take the details in the
information, strip it down to the bones by writing a headline, then add
words to turn the headline into a complete sentence, suitable for radio or
television.

INFORMATION:

A contract for the construction of a new road between Madang and Lae has
been awarded to a Korean company.

Use up-to-date tenses

The single greatest advantage of broadcasting is immediacy. You can

inform your listener as an event is happening, or immediately afterwards,
without waiting for typesetters or printing presses. Do not waste that
advantage.

Keep all tenses as up-to-date as possible. Use the present tense or the tense
nearest to the present and, whenever possible, use a continuous tense to
tell your listener that a thing is still happening, as they listen.

Compare the tenses in the following examples. The verbs are in italics.

There is no room for words such as "yesterday", "last week" or "last

Monday" in the intro of a broadcast news story. If the date makes the story
seem old or stale, hide it down in the main body of the story.

Do not use quotes

Do not use quotes in radio or television stories. If you want your listeners
to hear the words as they were spoken, record them on tape and use them
as actuality (the actual sound of something or someone, sometimes also
called audio). This ability to hear people speak is one of the great benefits
of broadcasting.
Also, quotes in broadcasting cannot work as they do in print, where the
readers can see the quotation marks. It is just as effective to turn quotes
into reported speech (seeChapter 8: Quotes).

Bad journalists try to get round this rule by using the words "quote" and
"unquote" at the beginning and end of direct quotes. This sounds clumsy. It
is much better in radio to rewrite quotes in reported speech. If you feel the
need to stress a certain word or phrase in reported speech, to emphasise
that these are the actual words used, underline them so the newsreader can
add the stress with their voice. Again, it is better to use actuality where
possible.

Some journalists mistakenly think that they will be safe from defamation if
they add "quote ... unquote" around danger words. In law, it does not
matter whether words are in quotes or reported speech; they could still be
defamatory. (See Chapter 69: Defamation.)

The only time you would use quotes in television is when you present
them as text on screen. This most commonly happens when it is important
the the viewer can see the exact words used, for example in quoting a judge
from a court case where audio or actuality of his voice is not available.
These quotes are usually kept very short and given in large, easy-to-read
type, punctuated as they would be in print media.

Put attribution first

Attribution in radio and television goes at the front of a sentence, as it

would if you were talking to that favourite aunt. This is unlike traditional
newspaper style, which commonly puts attribution such as he said at the
end of the sentence, after the quote. In newspapers, readers can see both
the quote and the attribution together. In radio and television, your
listeners need to know who was speaking before they can judge what was
said. Remember the linear structure of broadcast news.
Compare the following sentences. The attribution is in italics.

Avoid unfamiliar words

If a newspaper reader does not understand a word, he or she can return to

it and maybe look it up in a dictionary before proceeding to the rest of the
story. Your listeners cannot do this.

By the time they have worked out the meaning of an unfamiliar word, the
story will be over and they will have missed all the other details.

If you have to use an unfamiliar word or name, you must not hit your
listeners with it without warning. You should never put it as the first word
in your paragraph, but work your way towards it over familiar ground.

In the following examples, the unfamiliar words are in italics.

Repeat important words

Because radio and television listeners do not pay attention all the time, and
because people often switch on their sets half-way through a bulletin, it is
important that you repeat the essential features several times in the story.

They might be half-listening to the radio or TV until something - perhaps a

word relevant to them or their interest - triggers their attention. They then
'tune in' with their mind but, because of the linear nature of broadcast
news, they cannot go back and retrieve any words they have missed. So
repeat important words at least once in the story.

In the following example, the words Korean, Madang, Lae and road are
repeated:

A Korean company is to build a new road between Madang and Lae.

They estimate it will cost more than one-hundred-million kina.

Work on the new Madang to Lae road should begin in August.

The Prime Minister, Mr Rabbie Namaliu, says the Koreans were awarded
theroad contract because of their years of experience.

Of course, too much repetition can be boring, so do not overdo it. A simple
tip is to cover the intro and see whether or not you can still understand the
story from what is left. Try it with the example above.

Keep punctuation simple

Keep punctuation as simple as possible. In broadcast news, punctuation

marks are not only there for grammatical reasons. They also give the
newsreader clues on breathing.

In general, the only punctuation marks you need are the full stop, comma,
question mark and dash. Some writers like to use a series of dots to denote
a pause, as in the following example:

The Prime Minister... speaking at a business lunch... said the economy is

looking brighter.

Where two words go together to form a single concept, hyphenate them

whether or not it is grammatically correct to do so. For example, write
mini-market, winding-rope, pocket-book.

Simplify numbers

Numbers should be included to inform, not to confuse - either the

newsreader or the listener. Wherever there is the possibility of confusing
the newsreader, write the number in full.

Avoid abbreviations

As a general rule, avoid abbreviations. You can, of course, use "Mr", or

"Mrs" in your script, but do not abbreviate other titles.
Where the initials of an organisation are read as a word, write them as
such, for example Nato, Asean, Apec.

But if they must be read individually, separate each letter with a dot, as in
U.N., P.N.G. or Y.M.C.A.. Some broadcasters prefer to hyphenate the
letters, to make it even clearer that they must be read out separately, for
example P-N-G.

The first reference must be written in full unless the initials are widely
understood on their own - as are the three examples above.

Do not use the abbreviations a.m. or p.m. There is always a better way
which tells your listeners much more. Phrases like "this morning" or
"tomorrow afternoon" mean much more to most listeners. See how much
clearer the correct sentence is in the following example.

Give a guide to pronunciation

Pronunciation is a very large field. Most newsrooms should have a

pronunciation guide for place names and other difficult foreign words.

Good dictionaries should give you correct pronunciations, but if you are in
doubt, check with a senior journalist or someone who is likely to know the
correct pronunciation. For example, if it is the name of a species of fish,
check with a fisheries officer.

When writing an unfamiliar word for the newsreader, make their task as
simple as possible by writing it phonetically. For example, the state of
Arkansas should be written as ARK-en-sor; the French word gendarme
becomes JON-darm, placing the stress on the syllable in capital letters.

Do everything you can do to make the message clearer.

Writing for television

Although most of the rules for broadcast writing (such as KISS) apply to
both radio and television, there are a few additional factors to remember
when writing for television.
Making television news is a more complicated process than producing
radio news - which can often be done by one person. Television always
involves several people, performing specialist tasks such as camera
operating, scriptwriting, bulletin presenting, directing, studio managing,
lighting and sound mixing.

Television also involves two simultaneous methods of presenting

information - sound and vision. Of the two, vision is usually the most
effective in giving details quickly. For example, you could take several
minutes to describe a crash scene which can be understood from a ten-
second film segment. The words in television usually support the pictures,
not the other way round. That is why television reporters usually write
their scripts after they have edited the videotape (or film). You usually
have to write your script so that the words match the pictures which are on
the screen. This requires good language skills, especially in simplifying
complex language. If a newsreader has to read your script live - perhaps
from an autocue - it will help them if you keep the words and grammar
simple and the sentences short. (An autocue – also called a teleprompter -
is a device which projects a magnified image of the script on a clear screen
in front of the camera lens, in such a way that only the presenter can see it.
It is invisible to the viewers at home. It is used so presenters do not need to
keep looking down at their scripts.)

Of course, the words become more important when there are no pictures to
illustrate the story, only the sight of the newsreader's head and shoulders.
But you should always try to think of ways of presenting some of your
information visually, otherwise you are wasting half of your resources (the
vision). For example, if you are telling about a new tax on beer, you will
probably simultaneously show pictures of a brewery and of beer being
produced and consumed. You might also want to show a graph showing
how beer sales and taxes have increased over the past few years. And you
may want a clip of the relevant minister explaining why he is increasing
the tax.
As well as being aware of how your words will support the pictures, you
must also consider the effect the pictures will have on your viewers' ability
to listen to the words. For example, if you have some very dramatic
pictures of an explosion, you should not write your script in such a way
that the important facts are given while viewers have all their attention on
the picture. Perhaps leave a couple of seconds without any commentary
during the explosion, then bring your viewers' attention back to the words
gradually. Remember that every time you change the picture on the screen,
your viewers' attention is distracted away from the words while they
concentrate on the new image. Bear this in mind when writing your script
to fit the edited pictures.

Because television viewers have to concentrate on both sight and sound,

you cannot expect them to concentrate on lots of details while there are
interesting pictures on the screen. So if you want to give some very
important details, either do it when the camera returns to a picture of the
newsreader, or do it through graphics such as maps, diagrams, graphs or
tables or through captions.

Captions

The names and titles of speakers are usually written on the screen in
captions. These must be simple and clear, so that your viewers do not have
to spend much time reading them. Remember too that your viewers may
not all be able to read. If you know that literacy rates are low among your
audience, putting the written word on the screen will not alone explain
essential details. For example, in countries with high literacy rates,
television newsreaders or reporters use only captions to identify speakers.
You may need to both present a caption and also read the name aloud.

Subtitles
Subtitles are text versions of the spoken words in the bulletin or program.
They usually run along the bottom of the screen so viewers can read them
while still watching the pictures and listening to the words being spoken.
They are mainly used for two reasons: to assist viewers who have hearing
difficulties (called closed captions) or to translate words in languages other
than the language of broadcast. They generally need to be prepared
beforehand and they require concentration from the viewer, so they should
be done professionally if possible.

To avoid having to use subtitled translations of words spoken in another

language, it is possible to over-dub what the speaker is saying by fading
down the original sound and getting another voice to read a translation
over it, either a fellow journalist or a professional voice actor. Simpler still
is to fade down the words being spoken so they can barely be heard then
the newsreader (or reporter) can summarise what is said in reported
speech.

Stand-ups

One final word about writing for stand-ups. These are the times when a
reporter speaks directly into the camera at the scene of the story. Each
stand-up segment in news is normally about 10 or 20 seconds long,
meaning that it can contain several sentences of spoken word. Some
reporters write the words they will say in sentences on a notebook then
read them out in front of the camera. However, this means that the reporter
cannot look into the camera while also looking down to read from the
notebook.

It is better either to memorise the sentences then put the notebook to one
side or to remember only the key words you want to use then speak
sentences directly into the camera. In both cases, it helps if you keep the
language simple and your sentences short. You must also avoid using
words which might be difficult to pronounce. If you try to say "The
previous Prime Minister passed away in Papeete", you will get into
difficulties because of all the "p" sounds. Rewrite the sentence as "The last
Prime Minister died in Papeete."

Follow these simple writing rules:

• KISS - keep it short and simple

• Do not use quotes on radio or in television scripts

• Avoid unfamiliar words

• Repeat important words

• Keep punctuation simple

• Simplify numbers

• Avoid abbreviations

• Show how to pronounce difficult words