17

Fitting It All In

 

What You’ll Learn_________________________

Television and radio newscasts have one thing in common if you’re putting together a show for either medium: you need a good rundown (which some call the “lineup”). In other words, a good lead story, a good closing story, and lots of good stories in between. Furthermore, you need a logical order for your stories, so that you don’t follow a piece about a house fire with a piece about a dog that laughs, nor do you follow the dog story with a piece about a raucous city council meeting on crime.

And that’s not all. Your newscast has to be well written so that one story flows with a smooth transition into the next. And, the newscast has to be well paced, meaning every anchor voiceover isn’t 12 seconds long and every reporter’s package piece (the story told by a field reporter) isn’t two minutes. On top of all that, the whole thing has to be timed out perfectly, because you’re in trouble if it runs short and you have nothing worthwhile to fill the extra time, or if it runs long and you cut into the beginning of the next program.

So putting the newscast together requires objective decisions because, like a statistician, you have to squeeze a lot of material into a finite space, and to decide how long each story and each anchor transition should be. But it also requires subjective decisions, because you have to choose the story that shines above all others to open the newscast, the stories that get buried in the middle, and the piece that ought to play last, the one most viewers will likely remember.

What you’ll learn in this chapter is how to make those decisions, which means how to think about them. The rest—actually creating a good rundown—then should come automatically.

The Terms of the Story_________________________

Reader A short story the anchor covers without production elements such as sound bites or reporter packages.

Backtime Timing the pieces at the end of a rundown, so you know near the end of the show whether you have enough, not enough, or too much material left to cover.

Taking the Lead, Closing It Out

The first thing you should do when putting together your rundown is choose the lead story. Almost without exception, it should qualify as news, rather than a feature. (Actually, I can’t think of any exception. But like so many rules in newswriting, the exception probably will come up some day.)

Beyond knowing to choose news, how do you choose your lead? The same way you choose a lead sentence in an individual story: decide what’s the most important event of the day, and/or the most interesting event, and/or the most recent (breaking news). Although the examples in this chapter will focus on television, the process is precisely the same for radio, but without any consideration of course for video.

If one story stands out above the others for all the reasons you just read, plus it is a good picture story, then it’s a no-brainer; you have figured out how to lead your rundown. But what if you have two equally compelling possibilities, and one’s a good picture story while the other isn’t. I’d say that’s a no-brainer too; go with the picture story first, because it’ll grab the attention of the audience.

However, what if you have to choose between two obvious leads, and both are good picture stories, or else neither is a good picture story? Then go to the next set of criteria: is one story local, the other not? If it comes to that, go with the local story first. Why? Because at least subconsciously, when viewers turn on a newscast, typically they want to know first and foremost, “Is my home safe?” Then, “Is my community safe?” Then comes the question, “Is my nation safe?” and only after that, “Is my world safe?” Think of your viewers’ motivation in those terms and you’ll rarely fail to figure out how to prioritize your newscast.

To get you thinking about choosing a lead, consider the following hypothetical possibilities as if they are your choices one night:

Okay, this one was easy; the third option has all the elements you want in a lead story. But that’s the point: choose the story that has those elements, or at least as many as possible. They won’t always be so obvious.

Your next task is not choosing your second story, then your third, your fourth and so forth. You certainly want to create some flow from the lead story to the second story (or, if there are two good lead story possibilities, from the first lead to the second lead), but that will come soon enough.

Instead, after choosing your lead, your next task is choosing your close. The process is different than choosing the lead. For one thing, having good pictures in a closing piece is probably even more important than in a lead piece. After all, if a story is critical enough to lead a newscast, then the information usually supercedes everything else. But if you want viewers to remember the closing story and talk about it the next morning with everyone at work, good pictures enhance the chance that they’ll remember it.

So what are you looking for in a good closing piece? It’s easier to say what you’re not looking for. To begin with, “importance.” If a story is important, you’ll be wanting to position it higher in your rundown. (The exception to this is when a lead story is so big that you want to repeat it at the end of the show, just to make sure people who tune in late don’t miss it.)

Secondly, you’re not looking for anything dour or depressing. Closing stories aren’t chosen because viewers “need to know”; they’re chosen, frankly, to leave viewers upbeat, if possible within the context of news, to “leave ’em laughing.” You’re not looking for something dull or complicated. What you want is a story that makes an audience laugh or cry, ideally, tears of joy.

What’s the Point?

Some days a single story jumps out as the lead. Other days, nothing does. The only constant is, there has to be a lead story on every newscast. And a close. Although you might make a different choice than a competitor, if you use the criteria you have learned here, you can’t go wrong.

Filling in the Holes

Okay, you have chosen your lead story and your closing story. What’s left? Oh, nothing much—just the rest of the newscast. This becomes a challenge on several levels, because you want to deliver stories that people need to know. But also you want a rundown that flows and won’t lose anyone’s attention.

One key to success is in the decisions you make about sequence. For example, if you have two farm stories for your newscast—one about apple growers and the other about orange growers—is there any doubt that you’ll run them back to back? Of course not. They are related. It sounds like the most logical decision of the day. You have a sequence of stories about fruit!

But what if your piece from the apple farm is about the price of apples dropping below cost, while your piece from the orange grove is about unseasonably early frost killing most of the crop? Does it make more sense to pair the two “fruit” stories together in your rundown, or to pair the apple story with a related story about the economy (in the “economy” section), and the orange story with another about bad weather (in the “weather” section)?

The answer is, you can justify either decision. Where you put your stories in the rundown depends partly on what other stories you want to run. What’s important is to group stories together that have a common thread. What’s important is continuity.

In other words, look for ways in which stories are related and group them logically together. Put all the crime stories together, all the political stories together, all the international stories and all the economic stories and all the weather stories together. That’s a good start, but not foolproof: sometimes, as with the above examples of apples and oranges, a story will fall into two categories. For example, if you have a story about car theft, but it’s about car theft in France, you can put it either in your crime section or in your international section.

Or, better yet, structure your rundown so your international stories follow your crime stories, then let the French car theft story act as the transition between the two. In other words, let the story on car theft in France be the final “crime” story, which also makes it the first “international” story (or vice versa). Thinking like this actually helps you figure out how to construct your whole rundown.

What’s the Point?

What matters most is that the sequence of stories and of sections of stories in a rundown should be logical, and the transitions related and meaningful.

Bridging the Gap

The fruit stories you just read about—apple prices dropping below cost, while early frost kills most of the orange crop—lend themselves to good written transitions.

For example, if you choose to pair these pieces together because they’re both about locally grown fruit, you can write a transition that connects the two stories, something like:

While our area’s apple growers are suffering from high costs, the region’s orange growers are suffering from bad weather. Jane Jackson reports.

On the other hand, if you pair the apple story with another economic story, you have a substantive looking economic “package” within the rundown, which might make more sense and make for a simple transition. Ditto for pairing the weather stories:

Now that you’ve seen how the ice storm tied up tonight’s rush hour traffic, we’re going to show you how it hurt our region’s orange growers. Jane Jackson reports.

But now deal with a tougher transition challenge. Pretend your rundown has a story about auto pollution, followed by a story about high school cheerleaders (you never would have constructed the rundown this way, but someone else did and you’re stuck with it). Not a perfect choice, but here is how you might manufacture a transition:

Speaking of automobile exhaust, eight girls at our high school today were exhausted, after three hours working out some new dance routines ….

Ouch! That sounds manufactured, contrived, a “stretch.” On the other hand, you don’t want to just end one story (and sequence) cold and start another, as here:

…. and everyone caught without an emissions inspection sticker will be fined fifty dollars. Eight cheerleaders at our high school were bone tired today after ….

So how do you deal with the transition? The immediate answer is, try something else. Don’t build such a disconnected sequence into your rundown if you can help it. The emissions story could be paired with news about money, or pollution, or cars. The cheerleader story could be paired with news about health, or education, or sports. Usually there’ll be something to work with.

Then again, sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes you have a story that you must tell, even though it doesn’t logically flow into or follow from any other story in the rundown.

There’s still a solution. Use a simple transition word, or sentence, like these:

They’re not pretty, but they provide some sort of continuity.

What’s the Point?

The first place to build flow is in your choice of stories. The next place is in your sequence of sections. After that, it’s up to the writing. Good transitions can help you connect disconnected stories without almost anyone noticing.

Change Your Pace

Now that rundown construction seems logical, here’s something to make it hard again. Pace. Let’s say you have twenty stories to run in your newscast; eight of them are reporter packages, three more have video for anchor voiceovers. The rest are simply read by the anchor with nothing more visual than, say, a photo or a graphic over the anchor’s shoulder.

Even if your most important and interesting and recent stories happen to be the eight reporter packages, you can’t just put them in positions 1 through 8 in your rundown. Why not? Because while the top of the show will be dynamic, after that it’ll be anchor voice followed by anchor voice followed by anchor … you get the idea. The rest of the show would be boring.

So on top of all your other decisions, you have to figure out how to respect the other priorities you’ve learned in this chapter, yet observe the utmost priority of a good production. How? By spreading those picture stories—the eight reporter packages and the three video–covered voiceovers—through the newscast. Then place the other pieces accordingly.

There’s no set formula for this. But it doesn’t have to alter your key decisions. You choose your lead story based on the story. You choose your closing piece the same way. What’s left gets put in the big hole in-between, compromising between a logical sequence and a logical pace. This doesn’t mean radically shifting your story order. It only means sprinkling your video—the reporter packages and the anchor voiceover video—throughout the rundown.

What’s the Point?

Just as a newspaper tries to make itself look interesting with a layout (and with photographs) that keep the reader’s interest, you want to make your newscast look and sound interesting from top to bottom. The formula is to avoid any formula!

Ending Your Show

If rules were made to be broken, so were rundowns. You might have something timed out on paper that fits perfectly into your allotted time. Great, until an anchor takes another five seconds to chat extemporaneously about the story that just ended, or perhaps until a technical failure means a piece you’re counting on doesn’t play and suddenly you’ve got another ninety seconds to fill. Now multiply each snafu by several times per newscast. Inevitably it’s going to end up with too much material, or not enough. You just won’t know until you’re near the end.

For a producer, this can be the stuff of premature gray hair. But it doesn’t have to be, because you should build both possibilities into your rundown.

Too much material? The solution is, plan to cut something from the end. But not your closing story; you’ve counted on that one since you first created your rundown. Instead, “backtime” the show. Know the timed-out length of the last few “readers,” the pieces the anchor tells without accompanying video. When you’re near the end of the newscast, if other items have taken longer than they were supposed to in the rundown, you’ll have a pretty good idea how much time you need to cut.

So if you get near the end of the newscast and it’s running ten seconds too long, kill a ten-second reader near the end. If you need twenty-five seconds and your last few pieces before the closing story run ten, twenty, ten, and fifteen seconds respectively, take out one of the ten-second stories and the fifteen-second story. Suddenly, thanks to backtiming, you’re back on schedule. Make sure, of course, that everyone—the director, the technical director, the audio technician, the studio floor manager, and most of all, the anchors— knows.

If you have too little material perhaps because a piece doesn’t come up, or a story you were counting on doesn’t come in, or someone just miscalculates, the solution is backtim-ing in reverse. Have extra stories ready to fill the extra time—stories you don’t actually plan to run, stories that the audience can live without if you never get to them. Then, when you find yourself ninety seconds short near the end, you’ve got these extras to bail you out. As before, know their length so you can calculate the best combination to fill the hole.

Teasing Your Audience

To most people, “teasing” an audience would mean making fun of them. But not in broadcast news. “Teasing” for us means a short clip of either an anchor or a reporter appealing to the audience’s interest even before a newscast is on the air, or before going into a commercial break, to promote a specific story that’s coming up. It’s meant to hold their attention so they don’t pick up the remote control and stray to another station.

A popular film made many years ago called Kentucky Fried Movie had a parody of television teases, which went like this:

I’m not wearing any pants. Film at 11.

Well, that probably would achieve its purpose, but I don’t have to explain why you can’t use it in the real world.

What can you use? Something that tells people that you’re going to have a story worth watching or hearing, without giving away all its vital elements.

Assume a wing broke off a plane while it was taking off from your airport this afternoon. The plane crashed, killing all one hundred and ten people on the plane, and forcing the cancellation of all other flights for the balance of the day. If you do a tease like this, you haven’t left anything new and critical for the newscast itself:

A plane crashed this afternoon at the airport when its wing broke off during takeoff. It killed all 110 people aboard and forced the cancellation of all other flights for the rest of the day. Details at 11.

Details at eleven? (Yes, yes, in the Central and Mountain Time Zones, for most major stations you’d say “Details at ten.”) You’ve already given the key details. It’s enough to do a simpler tease like this:

A fatal plane crash at the airport. Many are dead, flights are cancelled. Details at 11.

Some teases, though, are too simple. Like,

Something horrible happened today at the airport. Details at 11.

It’s too simple because you have to tell people something, since even a tease should convey some news. And, you have to give the audience as much reason as you can for making sure they catch the story, which is why these next teases aren’t good enough either:

A plane crash today at the airport. Details at 11.

Viewers might assume it’s a light plane with a single pilot, sad, but not compelling.

110 people die today. Details at 11.

How? From a plane crash, or ptomaine poisoning?

A wing breaks off an airplane. Details at 11.

Okay, by now you know why this isn’t quite enough.

Exercises to Line Up Your Rundown_____________________

1. The Easy Way

You’re producing tonight’s newscast and you have the following stories to work with in your rundown:

Now, by applying your best news judgment, and by grouping stories together into a logical sequence—and the sequences into logical sections—create a rundown.

2. The Hard Way

Now it is harder. Create a good rundown from the same list of stories, but this time you have to take pacing into account. The stories done as “reporter packages” are in ALL CAPS and BOLD, and the stories for which there is video for an “anchor voiceover” are just in bold. All the rest have nothing more visual than a photo or a graphic over the anchorperson’s shoulder.

3. The Necessary Way

Below you’ll see four different “pairs” of stories from the list above. In each case, write a transition from the first story to the next.

4. The Final Way

Here are more stories from the list (which has been pared down). This time, you’ll see the projected length, in seconds, of each. Assuming your closing story is on this list (choose the best one), figure out what you’d drop if you suddenly had to cut 75 seconds at the end of the show.