Constructing a news programme
Style and fashion change in television news just as much as they do in any other walk of life. The news programme today bears little resemblance to the programme of only ten years ago. Content and emphasis change. Today, that means more news about the reasons for crime rather than stories about crimes; more news about how children and adults learn than just stories about education in general; more about the environment and information technology and what they mean for the future; more analysis about the consumption of some nations and the poverty of others. News has always been tied up in the process of change. Old orders fall and, with that, new uncertainties arise. Television is therefore put together by people who are interested in what other people both want and need. It means, fundamentally, that the people making decisions about news are interested in what a substantial section of the population is interested in at a particular moment of time.
The audience of the new millennium is far more discerning, with the same high standards of presentation and production demanded of the news as of any programme which might have taken months rather than hours to prepare. So because television news cannot appear to be lagging behind in professional gloss or technical excellence, or appear to be divorced from media such as the Internet, the journalists have been drawn by the need to produce not only news on television, but news for television.
Although short bulletins and summaries still exist on many terrestrial and cable services, in the main the list of unrelated events has gone, to be replaced by programmes on terrestrial and cable thoughtfully constructed and prettily packaged. Periodic ‘relaunches’ also take place, often coinciding with changes at the top: designers are brought in to sweat over the shape, size and colour of studio sets, famous contemporary composers commissioned to write a few bars of stirring title music. Relaunching can be a seriously expensive business, especially if it involves complicated alterations or building work to move a programme’s base from the newsroom to a new studio, or vice versa. A lot of serious investment goes into colour schemes. The big news organizations around the world tend to swing every few years between minimalist ‘trust-me-I’m-serious’ cool colours (blues and greys) and ‘trust-me-I’m-friendly’ softer pastels and natural shades (strawberries, cream and wood).
As part of a new look, old faces are likely to disappear from the screen and new ones take over, often amid much publicity and speculation about their salaries. The public has come to expect an element of showbiz about the news, even if it is merely confined to the window dressing at the end, when the presenters visibly relax, allow fleeting smiles to cross their previously grave faces, finger their scripts, and exchange pleasantries with other occupants of the studio. (One of the questions most frequently asked about double-headed presentation is what on-screen partners say to each other during the final few seconds they are on the air together.)
The importance of these trimmings should not be underestimated. Just as a newspaper properly seeks to attract its readers with the layout of its pages and its typographical styles as much as with the quality of its content, so the television news programme has to find a way of capturing audience interest and holding it right through to the end of its allotted time. Now more than ever, audiences are being asked to grasp abstract and complex issues which have a direct bearing on their lives. They have no chance of comprehending even a small percentage of them unless the subjects are presented clearly and unambiguously.
There is, however, one overriding factor: duration. Television news comes in all shapes and sizes ranging from summaries lasting a minute or two to marathon feasts of an hour or more, or continuous news services which are completely open-ended. Duration is the fundamental influence on style. The shorter the programme the shorter the items within it, the less room for frills, with only the bare bones of the day’s news capable of being squeezed in. The longer the programme the greater the opportunity to spend time on explaining the issues, on casting the net more widely, and on employing the full panoply of television techniques.
But how long is a long programme? Peak-time half-hour news programming was the pattern in many parts of the world since it was pioneered in the United States, but breakfast and daytime programmes in particular have room to take things at a more leisurely pace, with shortish bursts of straight news finding a place between feature-type material, sport and weather. ‘All-news’ channels, like BBC News 24 and CNN, may appear to flow in a spontaneous way, but even here the format is based on segments or strands, and schedules are cleared to make way for continuous live coverage only on breaking into a segment format.
The argument in Britain many years ago was over what was called ‘a bias against understanding’, a phrase which summed up the view, that, although most events formed part of a continuing process and could not be dealt with in isolation, television news,
devoting two minutes on successive nights to the latest unemployment figures, or the state of the stock market, with no time to put the story in context, gives the viewer no sense of how many of these problems relate to each other. It is more likely to leave him confused and uneasy.1
Coincidentally or not, the emphasis did begin to change, long before the holder of those views, John Birt, then working for London Weekend Television, found himself in a position to influence the journalistic approach within the BBC, where he became first Deputy Director General, then Director General from 1992 to 1999. In-depth reporting, analysis, background – call it what you will – began to find its way onto the screen in a form which in the past would more normally have been reserved for the longer, current-affairs type programmes. It became quite usual for news reporters and specialist correspondents to devote several days to the assembly of a single item intended to explain or interpret news as well as simply report the facts of it. The old idea of the ‘bulletin of record’, with every item of importance given an airing, however brief, largely disappeared. Instead, editors were encouraged to be more selective, to recognize that because time is so precious in television news it is better to tell fewer stories in greater detail. The change of emphasis heralded the introduction of longer and more frequent news programmes, the flexibility to overrun normal durations and, rarely, to interrupt schedules when very important events occurred.
All this assumes everybody actually wants more news on television. There are those who would say there is already too much, and occasional attempts on the part of those within the industry to reduce the power of the news organizations become a matter for national debate. A political outcry followed when the independent television companies removed ITN’s News at Ten from the schedules, the aim being to clear peak evening viewing time for programming considered to be more commercially attractive. The ITN late evening replacement – a bulletin at 2300 – had lower ratings after the change.
Grumbles about news are that it is too expensive, takes up a disproportionate share of facilities or is placed so awkwardly in the schedules that the really popular, audience-pulling, advertisement-generating shows and films are losing out. As more channels become available and competition from other media fiercer it is possible to imagine the argument for removing news altogether from conventional schedules becoming compelling.
Most journalists, while happy to accept the arrival of 24-hour news as a worthwhile extra, would react with horror to the idea of being ghettoized. While every serious-minded news practitioner is always eager to put forward sound reasons for more programmes, together with enough extra resources to support them, the honest ones are privately prepared to admit that, for the time being at least, news is only one tenant in the crowded world of television programming. Drama, films, light entertainment, education, sport, information websites and the rest have the right to live in it too, and it would be entirely wrong of journalists to ignore the truth, however much it hurts: they have to fit in with the schedules and not the other way round.
Consolation lies in the knowledge that television news does not operate in a vacuum. The journalist who genuinely believes in the importance of communicating current events to the widest possible audience will rejoice that others are sharing the burden. Although it may well have been proved beyond doubt that more people obtain their information from television than from any other source, it is equally true that television is not and cannot be the sole provider. Radio, newspapers, magazines and the Internet all have their own contribution to make towards the sum total of knowledge, and it would be foolish as well as arrogant for television newspeople to think otherwise.
The onus on all those engaged on news programme-making is therefore to make certain they use every second of their available airtime to present the news attractively as well as intelligently. And that demands, more than anything else, recognition that the interests of the audience are paramount. That may be saying the obvious, but it is a principle which needs to be restated and re-emphasized, for in the technological revolution which has all but overwhelmed the journalists during the past few years, the basics are in danger of being overlooked and the message distorted.
Put at its simplest, it is all too easy for the professionals to assume that because they understand what they are transmitting the viewing public will do the same, taking for granted everybody’s equal ability to concentrate on the news for as long as it lasts while viewing under ideal conditions. Even if this were the case (and it is possible to think of a hundred reasons why it is not) it is inevitable that levels of comprehension differ from person to person. Experiments to test the ability of viewers to recall in detail programmes witnessed only a short time earlier indicate concentration spans fluctuate and attention wanders during the course of a single bulletin.
Logic suggests this ought to apply less to programmes targeted at specific socio-economic groups, based on the outcome of comprehensive market research into style, content and on-screen personalities, but if, for whatever reason, some viewers do not take in what is being aimed at them, a proportion of those expensively gathered satellite pictures or the golden words of highly-paid presenters is going to be wasted. The best the practitioners of news can hope to do if they are to succeed is to reduce the comprehension fall-out by keeping their programmes and the items within them direct and uncomplicated.
Stories which are well-chosen in the first place, then carefully written and edited to present the most important facts with clarity and simplicity, are perfectly capable of conveying the message, even in a short time. Not so the irrelevancies and repetitions which masquerade as depth but add only length. Swiftly moving picture sequences, minuscule soundbites woven in and out of complicated packages, jazzy, all-action headlines and beautifully crafted graphics packed with information are all very well in their way. However much they may impress the boss or television journalistic colleagues, if there is any likelihood they will be lost on the viewer, what’s the point?
No one pretends it is easy. The frenetic excitement generated by a busy news day can militate against cool judgement, and the temptation to use every marvellous electronic toy now at the disposal of television journalists can be irresistible. At times producers and editors succumb too easily to the temptation of transmitting live pictures from a scene just because it is possible to do so using mobile satellite or microwave links, without thinking whether what is seen and heard will enhance the product. The extra ingredient is frequently no more compelling than a reporter on the spot virtually repeating the contents of the account he or she has just transmitted. ‘Live doesn’t always mean lively’, is how one senior television executive puts it. So why do it? For cosmetic reasons in some cases. In others, cynical acceptance that (a) ‘lives’ are cheaper because they use fewer resources than conventional filmed packages, and (b) if the links are not used often enough in this financial year the burgeoning accounts department will target them in the inevitable cost-cutting exercise before the next.
When rushes are flooding in by satellite, that most precious commodity, thinking time, can be in short supply or non-existent. The 40 minutes or so it once took old celluloid film to pass from processing bath to cutting room used to give programme editors a breathing space in which to make a considered assessment of whether they would actually want to transmit the stuff when it was ready. Beyond 2000 the wonder of instant video can dazzle an editor for choice, and it takes a strong mind and a refined news judgement to decide to reject late material which others have gone to considerable lengths to secure.
In the past, television news was so short, that editors preferred not to waste even a few seconds in reciting the contents. The items followed soon enough anyway, crowding one upon another, unannounced, at breakneck speed, more or less in order of importance. If bulletins looked like overrunning, cuts could be made from the bottom up without seeming to disturb such overall shape as there was.
Since airtime began to be more generous, this philosophy has been made to seem out of date. In its place has evolved the concept of the television news programme, dependent for its success on the ability of those in charge to take a series of disparate events and fashion them into something capable of taking on a recognizable identity of its own.
The criticism is still sometimes made that in reaching out for that goal, editors are inclined to let themselves be over-influenced by the availability of pictures. Such a generalization seems impossible to prove one way or the other. Yet, if it is true, there seems little shame in admitting it. By what other criterion should a medium which deals in pictures base its judgement? Given a reasonable alternative, no editor would choose to open a peak-time television news programme with an indigestible wad of copy-only stories and studio reports, leaving the first pictures until ten minutes have passed. It should never mean ignoring the important non-visual story in favour of the trivial pictorial one. What it does mean is encouraging editors to apply to television news the values of television, as opposed to those of newspapers. Most of the time broadsheet front pages and television news will follow similar lines: when they do not, editors should beg to differ and go all out to exploit the advantage they have over the printed word.
In many ways the argument is not so much about what constitutes a good story as about emphasis. On a front page of a newspaper, clever layout is used to direct the reader’s eye quickly to the most important item, or to any one of a number given equal prominence. In television news the implication is that order of importance is synonymous with the order in which events are transmitted.
In reality, whether or not they always succeed, some television news editors would prefer to concentrate on making programmes which viewers find easy to follow. Instead of being sprinkled haphazardly throughout the news like confetti, stories are sorted into small groups. An item about domestic industrial output, for example, might lead logically to one about exports, which puts the audience in a receptive frame of mind for a report from abroad. Brick-by-brick, the programme edifice should be built up in this way: little sequences of events linked by association of subject, geography or both.
Individual story durations and treatments have to be considered in parallel, so successive items will not look the same. This may lead to some stories being detached from one group to join another, or made to stand in isolation. There is no virtue in constructing a tortuous link for its own sake, or in promoting a story far beyond its importance just because it seems to fit. Without making a fetish of it, the target should be to produce a programme which has a beginning, a middle and an end, and which looks as though some thought and care has been given to its construction.
An essential part of the formula is the menu or headline sequence, which usually forms part of the titles. The headlines are meant to summarize each outstanding item in the programme, often in no more than a single sentence aimed at grabbing the attention of the audience and keeping it to the end. Over the years, headlines have developed from being straightforward reads on or off camera into proper sequences in their own right, with combinations of stills, graphics and videotape extracts to whet the appetite for what follows.
As well as imparting urgency at the top of the news, the headline technique also introduces a useful degree of flexibility. Once the bald details have been given, there is no rule to say the full reports themselves must follow each other in a block or, indeed, in the same order. Instead, editors should welcome the freedom to distribute their ‘goodies’ at points which help to give their programmes pace, variety and balance.
At the same time, other options have presented themselves for editors and producers eager for some format which will make their programmes stand out. Ideas are tried and discarded, varied and tried again.
Scores of details need to be settled. Here is a small sample:
• whether a programme should be fronted by one, two, or more presenters and in what gender, age and ethnic combination;
• who is regarded as the senior in a multi-presenter format, and how their working pattern should be planned;
• whether the lead presenter should preface the opening item with ‘good morning’ or ‘good evening’ or plunge straight into the news;
• whether studio performers should be framed dead-centre or offset to one side of the screen, and in medium shot or close-up;
• whether presenters should be seen also as reporters on location, and if so what happens in their absence;
• whether any separate sports and weather presenters should be included in the opening shot;
• whether studio introductions should be read by one person, off-camera commentaries by another;
• what kind of colour of background should be used: whether a plain, pastel studio wall, some illustration to suit each story or a generic programme symbol;
• whether correspondents or reporters appearing in the studio should be set against the same backgrounds;
• what ‘house style’ should be established in maps and other graphics;
• whether each contributor should be introduced verbally or by a name superimposition: if the latter, where it should be positioned on the screen;
• whether a ‘brand name’ or clock should be displayed at all times and, if so, in what size and position;
• whether sport should be included automatically or on merit;
• how a news programme should treat items immediately before and after any commercial break;
• whether the latter part of a newscast should contain more feature-type material;
• whether, in the absence of a commercial break, some other halfway sequence should be constructed;
• whether opening and closing title sequences should be accompanied by music or sound effects;
• whether there should even be set titles instead of something which changes daily according to programme content.
All this and more has to be decided with as much care and consideration as the way the news itself is reported, for without being offered high production values, the audience may not be inclined to keep watching.
How far editors are prepared to go in attracting and keeping an audience is another matter. High viewing figures – and the lucrative advertising which accompany them – can probably be achieved on a largely down-market diet of chilling crime and human interest stories fronted exclusively by good-looking journalists. Nevertheless, modern market research techniques are useful tools to be employed in establishing audience preferences, and most news organizations feel a need to bring in the style-doctors and focus-groups to help them relaunch news programmes.
An ‘act of faith’ is how a senior BBC colleague once described the editorial, production and technical processes connected with the construction of every television news programme: faith in the certainty that each separate member of the news team is carrying out his or her allotted task while others are doing the same. It is a faith shared confidently with those in the field at home or abroad, in the newsroom, in the editing areas, in the transmission areas, in the studios and everywhere else associated with the apparatus of news. At the root of it all is good communication, without which, in the constantly shifting sands of news, the whole thing would probably sink without trace.
To the uninitiated, the daily home and foreign news diaries, the ‘prospects’ setting out detail of coverage, the wall-charts and computer screens on which the progress of every assignment is followed, probably seem confusing and unnecessary. To those engaged in the serious business of making something tangible out of a set of elusive hopes, promises and expectations, sometimes on the basis of events yet to happen in places thousands of miles away, they represent a comforting reminder of the amount of effort being expanded for the sake of a common goal.
Although the variety in size and importance of individual organizations involved in daily television news makes it impossible to identify a single example as an illustration, it would be fairly unusual to find an office working pattern which did not make allowance for at least one morning editorial meeting to ensure as many people as possible are aware of plans likely to involve them at some stage over the next few hours. The idea is to provide a solid impetus to the team effort required, to enthuse everyone likely to be involved in the day’s production, and the most successful meetings, whether held in a newsroom or conference area, are those open to as many people as possible, and not confined to the editorial staff. In some quarters ‘pre-meeting meetings’, attended by only a small group of executives, have become part of the routine. The suspicion here – justified or not – may be that this time is used to determine the shape of the day in a way which pays lip service to what goes on at the later gathering. And the really paranoid can only be left to guess whether ‘pre-meeting meeting meetings’, restricted to a cast of the most senior or favoured few, cover more than a discussion of the day’s events.
The timing of morning meetings is also important. They should be held early enough in the day so anyone not already engaged on an assignment is able to attend, but should not be allowed to drag on or be side-tracked into irrelevancies. No more than half an hour of brisk, businesslike discussion should be sufficient for all but the most complex programmes. The crowded, tobacco-smoke-laden morning meetings I attended on a short but concentrated advisory mission to a newly liberalized national news organization in Eastern Europe tended to degenerate into long-winded arguments about journalistic freedom and integrity to such an extent that reporters and crews were invariably late getting out on the road and occasionally were too late for their assignments. While it was easy to empathize with those who feel a need to discuss such matters, the management was at fault for not keeping the meeting properly focused.
The significance of morning meetings in the culture of any organization can usually be measured by the seniority of those regularly chairing it. If it is the executive in charge of news – not a programme editor – who presides, then the occasion will be given a sense of importance and gravity which otherwise might be lacking. In the case of national programmes it is here that the duty editors responsible for home and foreign assignments will set out what is on their agenda for the day and how items in their domain are being handled, and they may also take a few moments to give first details of newly breaking stories or of developments in others.
It is here, too, that anyone engaged in the process should be encouraged to put forward ideas for coverage or treatment. Many a piece of original journalism has started with a half-formed idea which has been tossed backwards and forwards until it emerges as a rounded plan to be acted upon. Editors are known to complain that not nearly enough ideas are forthcoming from ‘the troops’, but it is often because those who would like to offer ideas believe the better part of their programme has been predetermined to a point where room is likely to be found for only the hardest of hard news. They are also likely to feel uncomfortable about putting their thoughts forward in company, for fear they may be ridiculed by senior colleagues or their peers. Ideas should always be encouraged and put-downs of unsuitable ones undertaken with great sensitivity, on the basis that a brusque rejection might deter another idea which would have hit exactly the right spot. Equally unproductive can be the routine in which the boss does the roving finger job – demands a contribution from everyone in turn. Not good management and not a way to raise morale; a sure way of encouraging people to find excuses for non-attendance.
For trainees and newcomers, editorial meetings can present something of a dilemma. Pipe up too often or too soon and your immediate colleagues will mark you down as pushy and arrogant: keep quiet and the editors and producers you hope to impress will think you have nothing to offer. Unless you are asked directly to contribute, your best plan is to hold back for a week or two to observe the rituals before risking a first foray.
Much the same advice goes for post-mortems, which may or may not be part of a news organization’s culture. Some editors from the Macho School of Management like to gather their teams around them immediately after programme transmission and perform a loud, public and searching review of successes and failures. Especially failures. Others wait until next day for a discussion, constructive or otherwise, which becomes part of the morning meeting.
In the knowledge that those who have usually poured their best efforts into a programme cannot wait to get home or to the bar, my own preference has always been for a very quick and low-key post-programme assessment, which is sure to include a few well-earned ‘thank yous’ and ‘well dones’. More negative aspects are tackled in private. Professionals know when they have made mistakes or underperformed: humiliating them in company seems pointless, especially as it can soon undermine confidence, which in turn leads to more mistakes. Of course, no organization is perfect and it is always possible to discover new ways of getting things wrong. Since there is usually nothing to be done after the event about such irritations as a misspelled place name on a map, an example of poor writing or a badly constructed picture sequence, a ‘discussion’ which degenerates into a slanging match is a waste of time, especially when it will probably be necessary to start the process all over again tomorrow with the same people, and the very rare occasions on which I allowed myself to stray from this principle have always been a matter of personal regret.
In addition to morning meetings embracing an entire newsroom staff, many organizations have formal or informal gatherings for individual programme teams. While editors and producers will be sure to keep track of progress during their duty day and the good ones certainly never lose sight of overall programme shape and content, they will often call their own teams together at various times as their plans begin to crystallize. A preliminary canter through items and their treatment is always useful, but often the pivotal part of any newsroom schedule is a meeting to structure in a more formalized way the sequence in which items are to be transmitted.
Without this information readily to hand in some consistently acceptable form, the production staff would be unable to translate editorial wishes into a televisual format, and the result would be obvious to the viewer in a short time. Presenters would be addressing the ‘wrong’ cameras, introductions would not match the reports for which they were constructed, graphics would be out of sequence or fail to appear on the screen at all. In short, the whole broadcast would disappear in confusion.
Figure 12.1 How a day on The Five O’Clock Report might progress towards transmission. The morning editorial meeting would involve staff on all programmes. Those reporters and camera crews not already on assignment would be briefed as early as possible: coverage intended only for The Five O’Clock Report might not be decided until the programme meeting at 0930. Compilation and writing of programme items begins immediately the programme prospects have been prepared, and may not finish until transmission has begun.
Yet crucial though it is to the smooth transmission of a programme, there is nothing especially complicated about this running order or rundown. In some small news operations it need be no more than half a sheet of paper on which the director notes the details as dictated by the programme editor, and then passes them on for the relevant staff to carry out. In other cases it is a lengthy, detailed document which emerges only after earnest discussion.
In either case, while practical necessity demands that it may have to be drawn up and distributed in plenty of time for transmission (and it follows that longer programmes need longer running orders, which therefore take proportionately longer to compose) the chances are it will be subjected to considerable change as programme deadline nears. That is inevitable, because even without the need to accommodate newly breaking stories, so much of what is committed firmly to the news processing computer at any stage up to and probably including transmission is no better than educated guesswork, based as it is on frequently sketchy information about such unpredictable matters as the estimated arrival of satellite pictures and sound from some remote spot, the duration and substance of a political speech (combined with the ability of the team on the spot to identify the most important part of it and feed it to base), the willingness of an interviewee to postpone a date in a restaurant in favour of two minutes in front of a robotic camera in an otherwise unattended television studio, added to the notional time it takes to edit and script half a dozen complicated packages.
For all this, the running order is the foundation on which any programme begins to assume a definite shape, and even experienced editors feel uneasy until it has been prepared. Many writers, meanwhile, like to know how the elements for which they are responsible are meant to fit into the overall scheme of things, if only because it enables them to decide whether they will need to construct phrases linking one item to the next.
The programme editor/producer will probably preside over the running order conference, perhaps canvassing colleagues for their opinions when outlining the framework and giving an idea of the approximate time he or she proposes to devote to each separate item. In some longer news programmes, departmental heads with their own teams representing consumer affairs, environment, sport, arts etc., contribute regular blocks, having a fixed allotment of airtime without needing to bargain for space.
This semi-autonomy of specialist areas can create enormous difficulties for editors trying to balance editorial priorities as they see them, and often represents a weakness either in the system or the people involved. Another headache for senior programme heads is the interest sometimes shown by executives even higher up the scale, especially those who find it difficult to keep their hands off operational areas they once controlled. This happens in all news areas. It is not unknown for a daily routine, originally established as a genuine wish by a senior executive to be informed about how things are going at the sharp-end, to metamorphose with time into yet another full-blown editorial conference which keeps editors away from their main duties for too long and during which ‘suggestions’ made about the running order or individual items cannot be ignored. Other editors will complain that distance is no saviour. Thanks to modern communications systems, senior executives need not leave the comfort of their own homes or offices to view programme running orders and if necessary take issue by e-mail or telephone with those notionally in charge.
Along with the morning editorial meeting, the running order conference, held at an unvarying point in each day, should represent one of the rocks on which the programme infrastructure is built and be mandatory for all staff involved to attend unless engaged on matters so essential that the team effort would otherwise be affected negatively.
Figure 12.2 The running order in the computer compiled after The Five O’Clock Report programme meeting. Different news organizations lay out running orders in different ways but this is typical for any of them. Every item is allocated one or more page numbers and titles to ensure flexibility. Other columns may show technical resources and the name of the writer/producer/reporter or an embargo time. The notional allocation of time at this early stage gives the editor an indication of overall running time. Changes to content and duration are inevitable.
The rest of any typical programme timetable (see Figure 12.1) is very much a matter of taste, dependent as it must be on factors which vary from organization to organization. Logic suggests, however, that a brief review of the running order is useful before the production team repairs to the studio, and that pre-transmission checks (see pp. 190–191) are equally valuable.
Some programme heads leave their production staffs with the responsibility for constructing and amending running orders, but as so much depends on editorial as well as technical judgements there remains a general reluctance on the part of most journalists to relinquish this control.
The idea of establishing a formal running order format would be considered almost laughable by many newsrooms for whom the daily newscast is a simple, almost mechanical matter. For others, the benefit of consistency is obvious. Bigger newsrooms with regular staff turnover need newcomers to understand and comply unfailingly with a system which leaves no room for error.
Insistence that running orders and scripts are constructed by everyone to a carefully defined format makes for speed and efficiency. With the introduction of uniformity so many simple mistakes are avoided: in the understandable haste which accompanies any approaching deadline it is all too easy to go wrong when no one is entirely sure whether the item entitled ‘Politics’ in the running order is the same as the one headed ‘Downing Street’ on the script or whether it is the same as the ‘Tax Interview’ tape which has been delivered to the transmission suite. It takes no great leap of imagination to appreciate how easily the wrong item could be transmitted.
Fortunately, with modern technology, mistakes are less prevalent than they once were. One of the main strengths of any of the newsroom computer systems is the ability to cope easily with the creation of running orders, and to handle all possible combinations of changes, up to and including transmission, within seconds.
We will come to that later. For the moment let us concentrate on the example of a fairly typical running order (Figure 12.3). Each item is given a page number and title by which it is identified during its brief life as a way of avoiding the kind of confusion described above. Where stories are particularly complex, or have several strands to them, they are allocated successive page numbers and titles. This is so that the individual writers responsible for them can produce scripts page-by-page to speed distribution.
Our specimen running order also contains several numbers against which there are no titles. This is a built-in allowance for any new stories to be slotted in without disturbing everything else. Where really drastic changes cannot be accommodated the choice may be between scrapping whole pages and renumbering or accepting pages out of numerical sequence. Whatever the decision employed, any changes, however minor, have to be communicated to the production and technical staff, so by the time the news begins no one is in any doubt about the part he or she is meant to play.
While the running order layout itself is very important, it does not have to be complicated. The chief consideration is for it to be easily understood by all. Essential ingredients are numbers, titles and sources, and behind what may seem to be a straightforward exercise, a great depth of journalistic experience and understanding has to be shown by the editor in the hours between the round of formal and informal conferences and the drawing up of this instrument.
Figure 12.3 The running order after the ‘Joyriders’ and ‘Picasso’ stories have been added. The ‘duration’ and ‘cumulative duration’ columns now include adjustments to take account of known changes in item length. Although there have been some minor trims – including the reduction of page 24 by 30 seconds – the programme is still theoretically more than three minutes over its scheduled 29 minutes 30 seconds, and decisions about the substantial deletions necessary have yet to be made. ‘a’ in the final column indicates that the script has been written and approved; ‘p’ denotes that it has been printed and distributed. By the time the programme is broadcast the rest of the running order will be marked in this way. Some programmes have ‘approval’ boxes (read by the editor and cleared for transmission) with a simple tick mark.
One of the most important factors in the construction of any running order in a fixed duration news programme is the allocation of a notional length to every story and, where multi-element stories are concerned, a notional length for each component. It is both an intellectual and journalistic exercise. All allocations are based on what weight an editor attaches to the interest and importance of separate items, their treatment, provisional position in the order, and the effect each element contributes towards the content and tempo of the programme as a whole.
Time is not the only consideration. Short bulletins are just as difficult to compile and require the same attention to detail, even though they may lack some of the trimmings associated with lengthier productions. No part of the programme, however seemingly insignificant, must be missed. Every facet has to be built in and accounted for as part of the tally, including opening and closing title sequences, headlines if any, and the time it takes for the presenters to ad-lib their sign off.
At this stage the arithmetic need only be very rough, but without it the editor will have no idea whether his or her programme is likely to meet its target duration. This, within the boundaries of conventional programme scheduling, is almost certain to be consistently very strict to meet overall station requirements. These may encompass ‘junctions’ with complementary channels, advertising breaks and the transmission of regional or local programmes. So any production of any type which does not carry advertising will probably be a minimum of thirty seconds shorter than its supposed length, the spare time being used for in-house ‘trails’, and other presentation announcements as a means of ensuring the next programme, of whatever category, starts exactly when scheduled. In this way, then, a typical half-hour news programme may last only 29 minutes 30 seconds, while a commercial half-hour news is likely to be nearer 22 minutes by the time advertisements are taken into account.
Another consideration to be faced by the editor in compiling a running order is the relentless pressure generated by the uncertainties of news and the process of gathering it. So much can go wrong, with stories going down for editorial or technical reasons, or simply not turning out as planned, the nightmare prospect of under-running is ever-present. It takes a steely nerve born of vast experience (including a few near-disasters) not to over-commission for the sake of safety or to succumb to the temptation of being too generous with material which comes in early and is available.
Editors known for a consistent tendency to over-set earn a justifiable reputation for being indecisive, and the inevitable consequence – having to leave out stories from the final transmission list – often leads to disappointment and anger on the part of those who might have sweated blood to gather material which ends up being junked for no other reason than it is fortuitously the ‘right’ length to fit the editor’s eventual need for savings in timing.
Some editors, mindful that a story dropped amounts to wasted effort and resources, build in ostensibly timeless ‘shelf’ or ‘standby’ edited items as an insurance against some sudden news famine, in the confident expectation it will never happen. In theory it seems a good idea. Unfortunately it has been known for weeks to go by with the same report dutifully included in every running order and put back on the shelf unused, until the day comes when – against all the odds – it has to be dusted down and drafted into emergency use. Because it has been previously viewed and found acceptable, no one in the hard-pressed news team feels the need to do so again, and on transmission the ‘shelf’ item is found to be embarrassingly out of date or to include an interview with someone who has since changed their opinion or their job or simply died.
There are other influences at work, too. In the competitive world of television journalism, reporters and correspondents are not above pushing their own stories against those of others, not hesitating, if necessary, to go over the head of the editor to more senior figures in the hierarchy as a means of encouraging favourable treatment. Insistence from a specialist correspondent that this or that report ‘must go today’ because the opposition may have caught wind of it is hard to resist, as are the exhortations from the foreign desk that a news team’s expensive deployment somewhere or other abroad is sufficient reason for every contribution they send to be used, never mind how little news they have to report.
Editors certainly do have to take all this into account, but they also have to be prepared to battle for their programme as they visualize it and on behalf of the rest of the team helping to shape it. Because it happens to be a star reporter who is pleading for ‘just an extra thirty seconds’ on a piece there is no reason to agree automatically, especially when ‘just an extra thirty seconds’ are being sought by a dozen others, perhaps with more justification. Editors have – should insist on having – the last word, and those who give in too readily are soon marked down as an easy touch by the bullies and lose the respect of those whose stories have to be sacrificed. A disciplined approach to the process must at the same time not rule out a willingness to accept changes in content, treatment and duration of any item, where these seem appropriate. Flexibility and confidence based on secure judgement about news values in general, as well as the worth of every item to the programme, should be a prerequisite for appointment to the role of an editor: and if that means putting older or more experienced journalists in charge, so be it.
Being entirely responsible for what perhaps several million people will see on their television screens for a short period is a thrilling and privileged proposition for those who care to think about it, so the editor will attempt to bear all this in mind when roughing out a first draft.
For news editors, making notional timings in multiples of 15 seconds will make the arithmetic simple at this stage: adjustments can be made when the real figures are known. Not even the most optimistic editor expects the duration of every story to be as originally allocated, but the tendency is for some of those which end up slightly longer to be offset by some of those which end up slightly shorter. Later, as the hours count down towards transmission and the duration of every finished item is fed into the newsroom computer system, it is hoped the running order will show a balance being achieved, the aim being to make it unnecessary to discard large chunks of material.
In addition to monitoring the progress of items on the running order as first envisaged, the editor’s antenna should also be tuned to the possibility of unexpectedly ‘new’ news.
For journalists who thrive on the kick of late-breaking news, television offers endless opportunity to indulge themselves. Scarcely an hour goes by in any newsroom without some event worthy of being reported presenting itself. The predicament facing editors is what to do about it. And when.
The television news machine, for all its ability and sophistication, is in many ways still very cumbersome. Putting a newscast of any size (duration) on the air is not unlike putting something into space: you can stop it being launched right up to the last moment, but once the thing is on its way it is very difficult to change course significantly without jeopardizing the entire mission.
On a network newscast the number of editorial, production and technical staff who need to be informed of every minute change to the running order will probably run into scores, and while most straightforward cuts and additions are accommodated routinely with practised ease, the warning bells may start to ring once alterations call for, say, the unexpected promotion of a middle-order story to the top, with all the attendant knock-on effects. The closer the changes have to be made to the time of transmission the greater the scope for misunderstanding, with confusion and uncertainty almost certainly leading to disaster on screen. Computers are all every well, but the determining factor is the ability of humans to communicate successfully under what can be extremely stressful conditions: psychologists would have a field day studying the behavioural patterns of those working in a newsroom or programme control room when big and late changes to a running order are taking place.
No sensible editor who has been this way before will ever choose to make amendments later than necessary, and will do so only after careful thought, mindful of what can go wrong. In some, the prospect of the whole thing falling apart on screen engenders a timid approach which rules out all but the most minor alterations beyond a self-imposed deadline – perhaps an hour before transmission – their argument being that a smooth, trouble-free production is preferable to one which risks being noticeably ragged for the sake of editorial changes of questionable worth. This view is inclined to change only when circumstances suggest it would be journalistic suicide not to do so.
Some programme running orders are fashioned with such care and thought, with one item flowing logically into the next, that editors are reluctant to accept changes or additions which would appear not to fit. At the other end of the scale are the gung-ho merchants who seem incapable of making up their minds and are forever tinkering with the programme right up to and usually including transmission, raising blood pressures (their own included) all round.
Countdown to transmission: The Five O’Clock Report
As a way of gaining some idea of how modern television news reaches the screen, we’ll use the basis of experience gained from several real programmes and apply it to the crucial last few hours before transmission of an imaginary example. We’ll call ours The Five O’Clock Report, a daily half-hour, advertisement-free national news programme aimed at a tea-time audience. Its style is serious and significant – bordering on the broadsheet – and its brief is to concentrate on the main stories of the day. While foreign coverage is certainly not ruled out, the emphasis is deliberately towards the domestic scene. News programmes later in the evening will be expected to broaden the agenda.
1.30 p.m.
By this time of the day, the editor’s thoughts about the content of the programme he will lead to transmission three and a half hours from now are fairly clear, based as they are on the knowledge of what his colleagues and the opposition have already put out in their breakfast and lunchtime news. The compilation of his own programme is based on three factors – news which has not changed but is still worth carrying over from earlier; developments giving a fresh look to other stories which have also been previously carried, and the few new assignments intake has planned to cover during the afternoon. The fourth factor, breaking news, is something over which he has no control.
The journalists allocated to him have spent the morning working on some of the elements he had already expected to include, but when they come together to put the components of the programme on paper, members of the team are unable to add anything significant to the informal discussions they have been having sporadically over the past few hours. Nothing that has happened encourages the editor to rethink the programme plan he started to form not long after reaching his desk first thing.
So, in the absence of anything more startling, a political story leads the way. Two overnight by-election results have raised questions about the leadership of the governing party. It is undoubtedly an important story, but unfortunately some of the shine has been taken off by the predictable nature of the outcome, and its place at the head of all bulletins since breakfast. Instinct tells him that if it is to continue to stand up as the lead item, it must be treated as substantial and multi-faceted. Immediately he is struck by the potential timing problems.
First, it will be necessary for the programme presenter to introduce the item by giving the main details in the studio. That is likely to take 45 seconds. A tightly edited selection of the noisy scenes when the results were announced will take about a minute, and interviews with senior representatives from the winners and losers are unlikely to make sense in anything less than a total of a minute and a half. Round off the story with other reactions and an assessment from the political editor, add the obligatory 45 seconds for the opening title sequence, and 7 minutes 45 seconds will have already gone by.
Second place in the running order goes to the economy. Oddly, in direct contrast to the government’s electoral failure on the previous day, the latest inflation and other indicators show signs of a continuing upturn in the country’s fortunes. In the editor’s mind it would be perverse to ignore the logic of following the one with the other. However, although the figures in themselves are easy to explain, the economics correspondent insists that his specialist gloss, illuminating the trend with some fancy graphics, can be applied only at the cost of two and a half minutes of airtime.
With this, the arithmetic indicates more than eleven minutes will have been accounted for.
At one stage the editor was tempted to lead his programme with a more popular human interest story which is sure to make all the next day’s newspapers. The survivor of a serious road accident 18 months earlier has been awarded record damages against the driver of the car which injured her, and the prospect of an interview with an articulate young woman making remarkable progress towards resuming a normal life against all medical expectations would have had particular appeal. The story has the extra attraction of being new since lunch, but the disappointing word from outside the court where the case was heard is that The Five O’Clock Report camera team were jostled during the media mêlée on the pavement and although what the interviewee said can be heard clearly the reporter believes the pictures are barely steady enough to sustain half a minute.
So it is with some reluctance the editor decides to put the story third: although the interview is disappointing he is promised an interesting minute and a half ‘two-way’ with the reporter who covered the case and a short backgrounder on the surgical techniques employed to put the injured woman on the path to recovery. This particular item has been extracted from a half-hour documentary made by another section within the news department, and the editor makes sure to allow an additional 15 seconds to ‘trail’ the programme, which is due for transmission later the same evening.
If all goes according to plan 17 minutes 30 seconds will have elapsed by the end of this story.
At this point, about halfway through the programme, the usual style is to run a brief sequence of pictures reminding viewers of the main stories still to come. This device serves much the same purpose as the commercial break in other news programmes: it helps separate the harder-edged ‘top half’ from the slightly softer items later on.
The ‘midway heads’, although useful, can also prove to be something of a headache. First, they use up nearly 45 seconds of precious airtime. Second – and more important – they reduce the editor’s flexibility to omit material if he runs into timing problems later on. Little looks more foolish than trailing a piece which is eventually forced out of the newscast, so he chooses his three items very carefully. The sequence will begin with a shot of the cows from the Topfield Farm report, an inner-city street scene to illustrate an item which appears to establish a definite link between youth unemployment and crime, and – on an entirely different plane – a boundary being struck by a relatively unknown Australian cricketer who has equalled the record individual score in a test match. By some means these extracts – plus the stories they represent – will be retained, whatever else has to go in an emergency.
The biggest uncertainty of the day is over another, related item in this part of the programme. Somehow it had slipped intake’s notice with the result that the planners have only just become aware that a new report containing the latest official crime statistics is due for publication later in the afternoon. It is being hinted that they will show an overall rise in clear-up rates by the police, but although copies of the report are being issued to specialist correspondents within the next hour, for reasons the editor cannot understand it is embargoed for use until long after his programme is over. There has been, he believes, some kind of bureaucratic mix-up which he is urging his planners to sort out before the programme.
In the meantime he wants a substantial item prepared in the hope that the embargo will be lifted, and he also wants an interview with the author of the report. If necessary he is prepared to do it live in the studio. This whole segment, he believes, could move up the running order, but for the moment, on the premise that figures do not show a dramatic improvement – or officialdom would be shouting about them – he is content to leave it where it is in the running order.
The problem is if the crime story does make it – by the time he has added the remaining stories and the closing sequence he will, in theory at least, already be exceeding his allocated half-hour (29 minutes 30 seconds) by nearly two minutes.
As they go through the items in the planned order of transmission, the studio director makes notes and asks questions about the likely production requirements. The opening and closing sequences are standard, the use of three studio cameras, the need to create insets behind the presenters on some stories and the live link to the political editor are all routine. The only slight difference about today is the possible inclusion of a studio interview, which with this programme usually happens no more than once or twice a week. The director is keen to know at what point in the half-hour the author of the report is expected to appear – it will be necessary to get the interviewee physically into her seat at an appropriate moment. The camera movements will have to be checked.
2.15 p.m.
With a running order in front of him on his screen, and on hard copy in his hand, the editor feels more at ease. The important decisions have been taken, everyone knows what is expected of them, and now there is a little time to relax and reassess.
Although theoretically he has too much material, he considers it to be easily manageable at this time of the day. He has already decided that if the crime figures and the interview do become available he will probably discard the medical element of the ‘damages’ story. The trail would still be relevant, but dropping the background minute and a half would make a useful contribution toward the two minutes he needs to save, and the rest could be made up by judicious editing of other elements of the programme.
Nevertheless, looking again at the running order, he considers the programme overall to be too ‘heavy’, lacking in the shorter items which would improve its pace. There is still time to do something about it.
2.35 p.m.
The programme has two regular presenters, a man and a woman, who ‘lead’ alternately. Both would normally have been at the afternoon meeting, and at least one should have been working alongside the editor in the newsroom since mid-morning, offering suggestions and becoming familiar with the items to be read later on. Today, though, the female presenter has been unavoidably absent, reading the hourly news summaries in place of a sick colleague. The male presenter, an experienced former correspondent, has been involved in a station publicity event for a forthcoming new series of factual programmes he has been asked to introduce, and has been delayed by an interview with an inquisitive feature writer from the regional press.
Now he arrives, full of apologies, needing to catch up. He has not seen or heard any news since early morning and feels uncomfortably out of touch with events. He and the editor go quickly but thoroughly through the running order, discussing each item in turn. Extra attention is given to two elements: the content and duration of the ‘two-way’ to be conducted with the reporter at the scene of the ‘damages’ story, and the possible studio interview with the author of the crime figures report. Agreement is reached about the general form the questions will take, and then the presenter leaves the newsroom. In the next three-quarters of an hour he needs to take a quick look at a recording of the lunchtime news and research the background of the author of the crime report.
2.55 p.m.
The foreign assignments editor comes over to the newsdesk. Because of earlier technical problems, a 60-second sequence of pictures showing the record-equalling test match score, made against India, has only just become available. They are now scheduled to come in by satellite from Sydney in two minutes’ time. The editor takes a personal interest in cricket, and advanced newsroom technology will allow him to enjoy the pictures without leaving his desk. He picks up a pair of headphones and switches channels on the small television monitor by his elbow to the incoming satellite signals. He knows the link with Sydney is already established because he can hear ‘tone’ (an unbroken signal used to identify sound sources) and see colour bars.
A voice breaks in on the desk intercom. The journalist working on the Delia Ward farming package has nearly finished putting it together: would the editor like to come to the editing suite to see it? ‘I’ll be along in five minutes’, says the editor.
Tone on the satellite signal has now been replaced by a repetitive message. ‘This is the international sound and vision circuit from the Channel 86 Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, Australia. This is the international sound and vision circuit from the Channel 86 Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, Australia. This is the international sound and vision circuit from the Channel 86 Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, Australia. Transmission will begin in 30 seconds. Please start your recording machines. Transmission will begin in 30 seconds. Please start your recording machines. Transmission will begin in 30 seconds. Please start your recording machines.’
A clock with a moving second hand takes the place of the colour bars. After 30 seconds the clock disappears and pictures of cricketing action begin. The batsman is seen vigorously hitting the ball to the boundary. The next shot is of a shirt-sleeved crowd applauding enthusiastically. Unfortunately the editor cannot hear them. He fiddles with the earphones and the monitor switch. Bat hits ball soundlessly towards the pavilion, followed by more silent clapping.
The foreign assignments editor calls on the intercom. ‘I’m not getting any sound on the cricket. Are you?’ No, says the editor. On the monitor the batsman is still laying about him. Much more than the expected one minute of action has taken place – but still no sound. Abruptly, in the middle of the bowler’s run-up, the pictures vanish. Colour bars and the repetitive message return. This is the international sound and vision circuit from the Channel 86 Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, Australia. This is the international sound and vision circuit from the Channel 86 Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, Australia. This is the international sound and vision circuit from the Channel 86 Broadcasting Corporation in Sydney, Australia.’ ‘They’ve obviously got problems’, says the foreign assignments editor. ‘I’ll have to check with international control.’
3.10 p.m.
The editor is viewing the Topfield Farm offering in one of the five edit suites situated in the corridor next to the newsroom. His employers expect him to carry full responsibility for the programme he edits and he takes it very seriously. As a matter of principle he expects to read every script and see every item before it is transmitted. Those posing potential legal or ethical problems he will scrutinise in minute detail. Admittedly some stories will not be ready until very late or perhaps not until after the programme has begun, and there are obvious difficulties with the live contributions, but he has taken care to entrust these to the most reliable members of his team. He will in any case keep an eye on progress as late as possible. Other stories will require adjustment – sometimes drastic recasting – or may not meet his editorial expectations at all and have to be omitted. There is also the consistently thorny problem of duration. He has no intention of leaving to others a decision to let a story over-or under-run its allocation. And he cannot make that judgement unless he has the opportunity to assess how valid is that call for ‘just another 30 seconds’.
He views Delia Ward’s Topfield Farm story once all the way through, without comment, making notes as he goes along. She has done well, and he likes the way the pictures have been put together, but his first impression is that the interview is slightly over-long and he thinks it would be possible to save about 20 seconds. He asks the picture editor to show it again but, after some hesitation on the second viewing, comes to the conclusion that cutting it would spoil the sense of the interview. Leave it unchanged, he tells the picture editor. With that he marks the finished duration – 3 minutes and 2 seconds – in the margin of his running order, and heads back towards the newsroom.
3.25 p.m.
The studio director and the producer responsible for the ‘crime figures’ segment of the programme are waiting for him. They disagree about a backing for the interview, if it takes place. The original production plan is for an electronically keyed inset symbolizing the report to appear over the presenter’s left shoulder when he reads the studio introduction. The producer would like it to continue during the interview: the studio director thinks it would look out of place and add to his problems with camera angles. A decision is needed. The editor gives the matter some thought. Friction between these two talented but occasionally prickly people is not unknown and he cannot risk the loser of the decision going off to sulk. The compromise solution is easy, he tells them. Drop the inset altogether.
3.30 p.m.
Signs of life from Sydney. The satellite pictures are running again. There are healthy cricketing sound effects for the first ten seconds, a loud ‘clunk’, then silence. Tone and colour bars return. They will have to try again, but not until four o’clock, says the foreign desk, because priority over bookings has gone to someone else. It’s going to be tight.
The presenter, comfortably attired in tee-shirt, scruffy jeans and old trainers, is pecking away at his keyboard with both index fingers. He likes to shape the opening story to suit his style, and is busily turning some agency copy and notes from the item producer into viewer-friendly language. If there is time he will also write the headlines.
Intake have good news and bad about the crime figures story. The correspondent covering it has convinced the press officer for the government department responsible for the report of the benefits of bringing the end of the embargo forward so that the item can be included in the programme. But the author of the report is not available for interview. The correspondent offers to write a piece and appear in the studio instead. The editor is not enthusiastic: he has already scheduled live contributions from two specialists – one from the political editor, the other from the economics correspondent. Go back and find out why the author is not available, he orders intake. Surely she must be aware of the importance of the report.
3.50 p.m.
Another viewing. This time the report of the ‘damages’ story is coming in over the microwave link from near the court. The interview with the young woman is really very good. She is composed, dignified and forgiving towards the driver who injured her, and somehow the unsteady pictures of the unedifying media scramble add a moving counterpoint. The editor likes what he sees. He is tempted to move the story up the running order after all. He gets on the intercom to the producer in the editing suite where the pictures are being recorded. The story is in danger of being underplayed. If these are the raw rushes from the camera and not an edited version of the scenes after the case he would like more of them.
Other stories are being put forward for consideration. Reuters reports that thieves posing as picture restorers have made off with a priceless Picasso from a Dutch museum. A journalist from one of the regional newsrooms telephones to say two teenaged joyriders have been severely injured on a motorway, crashing the car they stole from a service station. Some helicopter shots of the resulting traffic chaos may be available by five o’clock. Coastguards warn that a freighter carrying a consignment of sheet metal is in danger of going aground in heavy seas off Shetland.
Yes – as long as we can get a picture of the picture, says the editor. He knows he will annoy his viewers if he runs a story about a stolen painting without having a picture of the painting! Definitely yes to the joyriders. Keep an eye on what happens to the freighter.
The author of the crime figures report has been located a hundred miles from the studio. She is at home packing for a trip in connection with her report, but will reluctantly agree to interrupt her preparations to do an interview. There is not enough time in which to dispatch a reporter from base, so the plan is to ask the nearest regional station to provide one. The snag is it is not yet clear whether a camera will be available as well.
Sydney is up again, for the third time of asking. The editor puts on his headphones. With relief, he sees the pictures and hears the sound of bat on ball. But there is something else wrong: he was promised the voice of an Australian commentator. Commentary is like part of the action. Where is it?
The correspondent covering the crime figures story wants to know – slightly irritably – whether or not his services are needed. The editor is in a dilemma. He hesitates. Give me ten minutes, he says.
The studio director bustles into the newsroom on his way to the studio control room. Anything new? The editor leans back in his chair. Changes are imminent but as usual they depend on matters beyond his control. Decisions will have to be made very soon.
4.15 p.m.
Three-quarters of an hour to go, and still the programme is not finalized.
The regional station has confirmed it does not have a camera within fifty miles of the author’s home, but intake do have an alternative suggestion. She can be driven by taxi to the local studio and interviewed live, ‘down the line’. The intake editor doesn’t feel it necessary to add that the journey takes at least half an hour even on a good day, but, fingers crossed, the interviewee should still be there well in time for five o’clock. The editor says yes, and the correspondent is told his services are not required.
Helicopter pictures taken after the joyriders’ crash show up on the monitor. The motorway is impressively choked. It’s looking a better story than was first indicated. The editor toys with the idea of moving it up the running order.
At last Val, the female presenter, looks into the newsroom to say she has finished her long stint reading news summaries all day, and starts to get up to date with the scripts. At least she is well ‘up to speed’ with most of what has been happening over the previous few hours.
For the past ten minutes her co-presenter has been in one of the edit suites, looking at pictures which will make up the headline sequence. Now he returns to scoop up more of the completed scripts from his in-tray before going off to join the director in the studio for whatever rehearsal will be possible. His tee-shirt has now given way to a smart jacket, shirt and tie, but the editor notes with amusement that the scruffy jeans and old trainers are still there.
Hand-in-hand with the numbered running order goes a need for the careful layout of every page of script. This discipline is perhaps not vital in offices where the same very small editorial and production teams are at work every day, but big services with lots of output, especially those operating along shift-working lines, need to establish a consistent house style readily understood by everyone. The whole purpose is to ensure that every newscast proceeds smoothly, without the embarrassing on-screen glitches which detract from the production.
Just as the running order dictates what elements the programme contains, the written script includes indicators as to how and when they are meant to be introduced. The studio director, glancing for the first time at a page arriving in the control room two minutes before airtime, must be able to feel absolutely confident that following the instructions without hesitation will not lead to disaster. Poor typing or idiosyncratic layout could easily lead to misunderstandings among the production staff, with predictably disastrous consequences for live programming.
Scripts should be produced by individual members of the editorial team according to the convention which says each page must be typed onto one page, in effect, one page on a computer’s script segment. Technical instructions are in one colour or font (usually red or italic or both) and the script is in black. The technical instructions dictate what the viewer sees. The script in black is what the viewer hears.
The number of script copies required for each newsroom depends on the number of people most concerned with the production. At the very least the presenter(s), technical director, programme editor and those responsible for sound and graphics should all see the same thing on their screen and be able to read their own areas of responsibility. News computer systems have changed the attitude towards paper, but there is no doubt that many people feel less than comfortable with only a screen to guide them and nothing else. Whatever the merits of the paperless office it is far better to have hard copies, and too many of them, rather than too few. If it is a paper as well as a screen programme then pages should be printed out and distributed as soon as they are completed, and full sets collated for reference afterwards.
Figure 12.4 The script as it might look for the opening of The Five O’Clock Report, with production instructions and text in the journalist’s computer screen. In electronic news systems layout and styles will vary between different organizations, but they all follow this basic format. ‘Live Read’ means just what it says – the presenter is live and talking as the pictures for the headlines are shown on screen. ‘VT OOV’ means Videotape is playing and the presenter is Out Of Vision. Each headline, representing the stories the editor considers to be the most important or interesting, is identified separately. Note the commentary over each is shorter than the duration available. This ensures that words for one headline do not spill over into the next, and there is time at the end of the final one for the director to move smoothly to the following item on the running order before the pictures run out.
Figure 12.5 A generic script for the first of two pages allocated to the opening item. The script indicates that a video insert by a reporter called Jackson is to follow, but the details will appear separately, once work on it has been completed. Words in [brackets] are the technical instructions. This is what the viewer sees while the script is what the viewer hears. [Live Read + Inset] means just what it says – the presenter [John In Vision] is in vision and talking to camera, with a snapshot of the Opposition Victor at the presenter’s shoulder either left or right. [Capgen + Quote] and [John oovs] means a picture of the subject of the news appears on screen and John briefly goes out of vision while a direct quotation from the person in the caption appears on screen. Then John comes back into vision again. The final part of the process is to play the videotape report from our reporter called Jones. The technical instructions in the [brackets] are selected by the writer from pre-set instructions in windows programmed into the electronic news system.
Some news organizations responsible for several news strands each day may give each its own paper colour code, or number code. In this way there is no chance of a rogue script page left over from, say, the afternoon news, creeping into the late evening programme by mistake.
The best layouts are clear, simple, and easily understood by everyone. The amount of detail included is a matter for programme preference, although some information must be considered mandatory: the number and title of every script, corresponding exactly with those given on the running order; the duration, precise to the second, of separate components; the opening and closing words spoken on video or audio tape.
For the rest, a writer setting out an instruction intended to result in the presenter’s face appearing on the screen might not be expected to have to say how the shot should be framed. The instruction when to introduce a graphic need not go beyond identifying the subject. In these cases the visual interpretations are left to the director. The job of director has changed considerably in recent years because of the ability of newsroom computer systems to act on production instructions in the script, without the need for human intervention. This is all about computer codes – usually a sequence of letters and digits – which enable computers to talk to each other (in the way the fictional but plausible R2D2 talked to other computers in Star Wars). So if the news computer in front of the journalist says it wants a name caption (capgen) at 12 seconds into a report, it can tell a computer that makes captions to do just that. The scope for error is enormous, especially if fewer and fewer people are available to check each other’s work. The expression for this is WYSIWYG (whizzywig). It means, of course: What You See Is What You Get!
Figure 12.6 The accurate duration of every video or audio insert, together with the In Words and Out Words, are regarded as essential information to be included in a script page on the computer screen. The information on this page is for the transmission of the video report on the election scenes and would follow immediately after the presenter has read the script in Figure 12.5. The reporter’s name appears as a word Caption (also known as Aston or CG). Conventionally a NAME is in capital letters and the Title (or what a person is) is in normal title case.
Figure 12.7 A script page must be put into the system for every item in the running order, even though the details might be sketchy. This is for a live contribution by the Political Correspondent – a two-way summary in which the presenter ‘links’ to an Outside Source (OS) where the Correspondent is standing waiting to respond to a few questions. Because it is live, the writer is only estimating that the news item will be 1.30 in duration. A Capgen is available to the director but because this is live the time for it to appear is not set on the script. This is because the director may want the freedom to bring it up when it seems appropriate.
The individualistic approach to script layout is matched if not exceeded by the way the terminology of television is used. As well as differing from one news service to another it is not uncommon for it to do so between stations within the same organization.
For instance some stations are happy to use ‘videotape’ and ‘caption’ as generic terms, without bothering to differentiate between formats and styles, or to refer to items of equipment by their trade names. While in the control room during one newscast the command ‘run VT’ is accepted shorthand for ‘pjut videotape product made by the Sony Corporation on the screen’, in others ‘run/take Vt/cut to report/play it!’ will mean the same thing.
Television has defied several brave attempts to establish a definitive glossary which would iron out all these inconsistencies. Compatible computer processing and output systems have helped to eliminate a lot of the differences in language used. Maybe it scarcely matters anyway. Uniformity, however desirable, is less important than ensuring everyone concerned in the production of news understands and reacts correctly to whatever local terminology is considered acceptable.
1. The Times, 28 February 1975.