Broadcast Writing

   When the Associated Press set up a news wire specifically written for radio stations, Mitchell Curtiss said the ideas was to find a way "to string words together in such way that they listened well." How well we do that depends on the words chosen and the relation to the pictures and sounds used. (AP Broadcast News Handbook)

   Writing broadcast copy differs somewhat from writing print copy - you write for the ear rather than the eye. What the listener hears determines what is remembered. Good writing will be memorable; poor writing, forgotten. Serious broadcast writers must have a basic understanding of English grammar, spelling and punctuation - a misspelled word is a stumble waiting to happen.

   Great reporters listen more than they talk. Great broadcast reporters listen intently as they capture the speech and sound of their audience. Few people talk using 50-cent words; most use the dime variety. But we still must stay away from clichés and journalese. To get an idea of conversational tone, watch the network news and notice their transitions into stories.

   One of the greatest broadcast announcers worked in both radio and television. Edward R. Murrow loved turning a phrase. Producers fussed at him for not looking up into the TV camera, but he concentrated on the words he wrote. The book "Crusaders, Scoundrels, Journalists: The Newseum's Most Intriguing Newspaper" archives this Murrow gem when he covered the bombing of London in this CBS radio dispatch:

Before eight, the siren sounded again. We went back to a haystack near the airdrome. The fires up the river had turned the moon blood red. The smoke had drifted down 'til it formed a canopy over the Thames; the guns were working all around us, the bursts looking like fireflies in a Southern summer night ... Suddenly all the lights dashed off  and a blackness fell right to the ground. It grew cold. We covered ourselves with hay. The shrapnel clicked as it hit the concrete road nearby, and still the German bombers came.

   You may be tempted to just report your impressions of an event, but that can lead to trouble. Avoid mistakes by avoiding conclusions. Let the reader make their own conclusions. Just as in print journalism, listeners do not really care what you think, only what you can prove. For more don'ts, see the box at the top of p. 207.

   AP suggests not only asking the 5 Ws and 1 H to get the broadcast story, but also asking the "so what?" This question provides the lead to your story. Your lead will structure the entire broadcast story. Think of your story as your end of a conversation with someone who wants to know what happened at an event. But remember, the listener cannot rewind if they don't understand what you've said.

   You must convey a sense of feeling in your broadcast articles to capture the public's imagination. Broadcast writing requires that you tell the story as it unfolds. You ask questions hoping to generate a sound bite. When the sound bite airs, listeners can tell if people are happy, sad, angry, distressed, scared, etc. Use sound bites to get out of the way and let those involved tell the story.

   While closed-ended questions allow subjects to answer "yes" or "no," open-ended questions make the subject explain their position on an issue. Once people begin sharing their feelings with you, don't stop them. While you may not use everything they say in your broadcast story, it's better to be sure that you've got everything rather than miss an important quote because you think too much of yourself. Once again, save the tough questions for last, but be respectful in your questioning or risk never talking with the source again. For more interviewing tips, see p. 204 in your book.

   Remember: only the most important facts can get in the story - there's not time for anything else. The AP Broadcast News Handbook notes radio remains the place where immediacy, brevity and relevance count the most. Radio stories run in 30 or 35 seconds. Television stories must remain within a 60 to 90 second timeframe.

   Triple-space your copy and write it on the right side of the paper, which allows the left side for video cues.

• For radio, select font size and margins to produce an average of 10 words per line. Most announcers read at a rate of about 15 of these lines per minute. So in radio news, one typed line takes about four seconds to read. A 30-second story is seven to eight lines long.
• For television, set your margins to yield about six words to the line, or about 21 lines per minute at an average reading speed -- the equivalent of about two seconds per line. Thus a 30-second TV story is about 15 of these lines.
A lead-in describes the anchor switching to a reporter on the scene. As producer of the package, you must write your own lead-in. Don't have the anchor say something in the lead-in that you'll say in the broadcast, e.g.


"There are reports of rabid razorbacks in Northwest AR--kan-SAW waiting for the rematch of last year's heartbreaking loss to Tennessee. Correspondent Ron Sit-on has more on the phenomena. Ron?"

   Just as in print, broadcast news uses a certain style. While it's impossible to list every difference between print and broadcast writing in this Web note, here's some basics:

   Attribution, the KEY element to your story, comes before a quotation rather than after it. Everything needs a source unless you witnessed it. Get the attribution high in the story.

If you don't understand something in this Web note, please e-mail Dr. Sitton.