- Another concerning trend involves who is watching broadcast television, particularly news. 4Media Group reports that millennials (born between 1980 and 1994) “consume the most earned media in every major category except traditional television [emphasis added].”
- Baby Boomers, those born between 1946 and 1964, are about 20% of the total U.S. population and 72% of them count on traditional television for news and information; 34% also use streaming.
- Gen X (born between 1965 and 1979) are 18% of the U.S. population and 59% of them use traditional TV for news and information; 47% also use streaming.
- Fifty-one percent of Millennials — 13% of the U.S. population — consume news and information via traditional television, however 61% count on streaming for this content.
- Gen Z (born between 1995 and 2012; 14% of the U.S. population) use traditional TV and streaming TV equally for news and information —48% each.
- Younger audiences are moving away from broadcast as their source for news content.
Writing for radio and television is different from writing for print for several reasons:
First, you are writing for “the ear.” In print news stories, you are writing for “the eye”; the story must read well to your eye. The television or radio news story has the added complexity that it has to sound good; when a listener hears the story it has to read well to “the ear.”
Second, you have less space and time to present news information. Therefore, you must prioritize and summarize the information carefully. That means who, what, when takes precedent over why and how. Focus your story by summarizing in three words. Use one theme per story, one thought per sentence. Select, don’t compress, what goes in your stories.
“Print folks are surprised by how little information they can include in a radio story … Radio demands that we’re hyper-vigilant curators.”
— Julianne Welby, senior editor, WNYC News
As Dan Rather says ….
And third, your listeners cannot reread sentences they did not understand the first time; they have to understand the information in a broadcast story as they hear it or see it. As a result, you have to keep your writing simple and clear.
When listening, you have different expectations and capabilities. You can’t control the pace of the story. Radio is linear; it always moves forward. The words and sounds whiz past the ear, with no opportunity to slow down or rewind (unless you’re listening online or on mobile, and even then, rewinding isn’t easy). You forget names and titles. Too many numbers make your head spin. At that relentless pace, many sentences that work in print make for bad radio
The journey from print to radio
In local television, newscasts in recent years have placed an even greater emphasis on traffic, weather and sports (these now make up 40 percent of newscasts). Meanwhile here is what viewers of local news want/think:
Local broadcast news also has reduced the number of edited package stories on the air (by 10 percent) and shortened the lengths of stories, trends that may reflect the economic strains affecting the industry.
In the latest study, only 20% of the local television stories exceeded a minute while 50% lasted less than 30 seconds. In detail, story packages averaged one minute and 15 seconds in length; live staff report was 44 seconds and the average anchor voice-over lasted 25 seconds. Pew Research finds that the median length of a story with video on a local news broadcast is 41 seconds (compared to network, cable new which is 2 minutes, 23 seconds). The median length of a story that did not contain video was 22 seconds.
The average announcer reads 2.5 words per second. So doing math, a 22-second spot is 55 words. Radio newscasters usually read faster than television newscasters. Anchors talk slower than TV reporters. A common estimate for a voiceover, for example, is 180 words a minute (that’s 3 words a second, 45 words for a 15 second shot). You will need to count.
AP broadcast story guidelines:
Lead > Backup > Details > Background
Example:
A huge wildfire in eastern Arizona is expected to spread to New Mexico. Both wind and dry lightning are forecast over the next two days.
Arizona fire officials say more than one thousand firefighters are working the blaze. There have been no serious injuries, but hundreds of people have been evacuated … and eleven buildings have been destroyed.
The fire has burned more than 350 square miles. It’s the third-largest wildfire in Arizona’s history.
Lead: The first sentence in this story represents the essential facts that are the news
Backup: The second sentence backs up the lead
Details: These next sentences report additional important facts
Background: The story ends by putting the fire into current and historical perspective
Another key point about story structure: You need deliberate transitions. Print and digital stories can use section headings, line breaks and other elements of visual design to indicate transitions. In audio, all we have is sound. So transitions can be explicitly narrated (i.e. “In order to learn more about the policy
Principles used by AP’s broadcast writers:
1. Lead with the news: Report the latest newsworthy development. Timeliness is emphasized. Writing a broadcast news story is similar to writing a news story for the eye in that you have to include the important information first. The only difference is that you have to condense the information presented. Leads tell us “so what.” Body tells us “what.”
2. In the leads especially, use forms of the present or future verb tenses, unless past tense is necessary: Fire “is expected” to spread. BUT, don’t write in the simple present tense “headline” style: Fire “destroys” Present perfect tense sounds more natural: “A wildfire has destroyed …” There is more than just simple present tense. Here is an example from ABC News.
3. Sometimes you might cue-in a more complicated lead: Gives listener a chance to start paying attention.
4. Keep leads (and sentences) short and to the point: It’s easy for listeners and viewers to miss details. Use the lead to introduce the story and save details for subsequent sentence. Each sentence should be brief and contain only one idea (20 words or less is a good frame of reference)
5. But use a variety of sentence lengths and avoid dependent clauses: You want to write the way people talk.
Good print writers are experts at tucking a lot of information elegantly into sentences. Dependent clauses, such as the one I’m writing into this sentence, come in handy in print. But they are toxic to radio writing. Here are two reasons for this: First of all, we don’t talk that way. If you listen closely to people chatting with each other, you will rarely hear a dependent clause. I don’t tell people, “My dad, who spent 40 years teaching physics, is a smart guy.” I’m more likely to say, “My dad taught physics for 40 years. He’s a smart guy.”
The journey from print to radio
Examples: The crumbling Salt Creek bridge on Old Route 9, considered one of Middle County’s most historically significant bridges, will receive a $200,000 grant for repairs from the state Department of Transportation.
Instead: The state Department of Transportation is spending 200 thousand dollars to repair the crumbling Salt Creek bridge. The bridge on Old Route 9 is considered one of Middle County’s most historically significant bridges.
“The fire, which started yesterday, has grown to 200 acres.” Instead, “The fire started yesterday and has grown to 200 acres.”
Dependent clauses are OK at end of sentence.
6. Favor the active voice (subject, verb, object): “Firefighters are working to contain…” not “The blaze is being contained by firefighters …”
7. Attribute at the beginning of sentences: “Fire officials say” not “, said fire officials.” And use say, not said.
8. Identify newsmakers before name them: Fire Chief Bob Smith, not Bob Smith, fire chief, … Also keep identifiers simple. And omit obsure names. It’s OK to say “A hospital spokesman says Smith is OK” when that’s the only time you reference that person.
9. Write tightly. Omit needless words and information. Remember who, what, where, when over why and how.
10. Prefer the simple to the complex: “fire” not “conflagration.”
11. Avoid synonyms and pronouns: If you say “the state” someone who didn’t hear the first sentence might not know the story is about Arizona.
12. Use direct quotes only when a paraphrase doesn’t work better: In most cases (unless you have a sound bite) it does.
13. Simplify numbers and avoid abbreviations: Round them off. Use half instead of actual number, etc. Don’t put Nov. 1, cause we say it November 1st.
14. Use correct grammar: It’s as embarrassing to “say” a grammatical mistake as to read one. But contractions are actually good in broadcast (cause it’s how we talk).
15. Pronouncers: When needed put in parentheses immediately following word or name.
16. Don’t overdue immediacy
17. Readibility: Broadcast news stories are double-spaced, and in uppercase/lowercase. Many years ago, television news scripts were written in all uppercase, but that practice has changed in recent years. (Some still prefer to do a teleprompter that way).
18. Use objective copy and subjective sound. Your text should contain objective words and facts. Let the people in the story give opinions, express feelings and evoke emotions in their soundbites.
19. Tell complex stories through strong characters. Viewers will remember what they feel longer than what they know. (Obviously this is used with packages more).
COM252: Writing for the Mass Media 