Week 6 - News Presentation

A phrase that is added to many advertisements as a requirement for jobs in radio news, "... and a good microphone voice" But what is a good microphone voice?

Allot of it is down to interpretation however a local radio station would usually much rather employ a local accent compared with possibly employing someone say that's an American to read radio news in Townsville.

When commercial radio first started in 1973 radio stations employed journalists alongside news readers. Today stations often have one person that does it all.

Aside from voice news readers must possess an ability to convey information accurately with correct tone, emphasis and speed.

Checking and rehearsing a script is never a waste of time. By reading a script beforehand you can spot unfamiliar words and replace or practice words your unfamiliar with.

A news reader would sometimes replace the word 'rural' with 'countryside' if they always have difficulty pronouncing 'rural.' This saves the embarrassment of being caught out on air.

Also you should be careful with the sentences such as the below which can prove problematic to listeners.

'Chelsea scored two goals, Tottenham one/won'
'He was discovered lying dead by (rather than beside) the telephone box.

Even an experienced news reader sometimes also has the intro and outro phases written down, as if things go wrong it is hard to recover. It has been known for newsreaders to use the name of the station they used to work for, or even forget their own name.

Keep level - Keep your voice level and compressed - Strong rises and falls in your tone of voice will puzzle and maybe annoy the listener. Sentences usually rise in the middle and go down towards the end. The trick is to avoid speaking down to the audience.

Tone - Tone is vital for your presentation. Need to sound authoritative, yet natural.

Pronunciation - Local places names on local stations must be pronounced correctly. Getting the name of a local person, business man, suburb of place insults your listeners, it is also damaging to your reputation.

Specialized Presentations - Mainly commercial radio stations have a news reader that interacts with the radio DJ. These personality readers often just speak the news in a conversational manner.