Television news is a fascinating, demanding and exciting enterprise.
Some news shows are staged in mammoth studios with millions of
dollars’ worth of equipment and large crews. Other, more modest
productions take place in tiny, makeshift quarters (in high schools, for
instance) with a few hundred dollars’ worth of equipment and a crew
of two or three. In either case, the success of the production begins and
ends with the producer, the person who is responsible for pulling the
whole project together.458 MIXED MEDIA
Anchor Slug Script Reporter TRT
M Welfare Reform PKG PR 1:45
L Housing Project Study VO/SOT WH :45
L Teen Pregnancy Rate RDR JJ :20FIGURE 19.5
SCRIPT RUNDOWN
Your Beat
- Write and record a five-minute newscast about the
activities of a single day in your school (use audio or
video, whichever is more readily available). Compare
your decisions on the order and time allocated to
each story with those of other students in your class. - Ask a local television station for a copy of one of its
anchor scripts. Practice reading the script with as
few errors as possible. - Watch a local late television newscast one night,
and have one or two of your classmates watch the
competition’s newscast. Write down the order of sto-
ries in which they appeared and the format in which
they were handled (VO/SOT, PKG, LIVE and so on).
Notice any graphics or other distinguishing features
of the newscast (for example, consumer/medi-
cal segments). Get together and compare notes.
What did you like about the newscasts? Which one
seemed to give the most news information? Which
one was the most pleasing to watch, and why? What
differences did you observe?