Presenting on TV and Radio

An insider's guide

Janet Trewin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136024092
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Aspiring radio and TV presenters will benefit from the informative and entertaining guidance provided by accomplished presenter, Janet Trewin. Presenting on TV and Radio is packed with illustrations, practical exercises and insider tips for improving your presentation skills and breaking into this competitive industry. Based on the principle that all successful presentation on TV and radio is dependent on uniform skills applicable to both mediums, the book begins by explaining basics such as appearance, authority, body language, diction, scriptwriting, deadlines, technology and working with a co-presenter. Valuable insights into key employment issues such as sexism, ageism, racism and disability are also offered. The different requirements of TV and radio presentation are then examined, focusing on each specialist area in detail and with tips from professionals in the business. These include: presenting news in the studio as an anchor and as a reporter on the road; current affairs and features involving live and recorded material; DJ'ing; light entertainment (e.g. game shows and personality programmes); sports presentation; children's programmes; foreign broadcasters and those broadcasting to worldwide audiences.

I What it is and how to do it

1 Being a presenter

DOI: 10.4324/9780080473949-1

Being a presenter is either one of the most difficult jobs in broadcasting … or it's one of the easiest, cushiest numbers you could ever hope to get. Some presenters are expected to be intellectually brilliant, journalistically unsurpassed and capable of displaying these talents constantly on TV or radio with never a hint of pomposity. Others are expected to be pompous, infuriating and hated! Some are hired because they are experienced in all aspects of broadcasting. Others are wanted entirely because they are inexperienced and gauche. Some (a frighteningly large number) merely need good looks, bundles of personality, an ability to read an autocue and, in moments of crisis, to do what they're told. Inevitably, if being a presenter can mean being so many different things, becoming one is bound to be something of a challenge!

One of the reasons why presentation defies definition is that duties can vary so completely. News and current affairs presenters tend to be heavily involved in the whole news-gathering operation, while a features presenter on location may have to do little more than appear and read a prepared script. Either way it's not easy. Nor is it an end in itself. Channel 4 News presenter, Jon Snow, is quite clear on this point:

Presentation is secondary to all other skills. If you want to be ‘a presenter’, forget it. What you must be is a first-class journalist. You must be capable of asking questions. The right questions covering the issue and you must ask them on behalf of the audience you are talking to. Even if you are only reading someone else's copy, which is pretty depressing, you must still have enough of an inquiring mind to know what the questions are and what issues are raised. To be a presentational slave is to be a tedious operator. You must be able to write what you read. All this is true of absolutely any type of presentation. The success of Richard and Judy is based upon their understanding of the right questions for their audience. You can't be a great communicator unless you can do this.

Figure 1.1 Jon Snow believes there is no such thing as presentation — only good journalists who communicate well

Presenters are often accused of whinging about what a hard job it is. Understandably, they get little sympathy since if they do their job well they achieve the deceit that it is glossy and easy. You are paid to make complicated things seem straightforward, to look bright and be informative. In reality these are terrifically complicated things to achieve, particularly whilst everything is falling apart behind the scenes, a fact well recognized by Lis Howell. She rose through presentation in TV and radio to become Managing Editor of Sky News, Programme Director of GMTV and Senior Vice President of the cable and satellite group Flextech. A hirer and firer of the first order.

I don't think being a presenter is the job. I think being a capable TV professional and producer is the job. I don't think newcomers to the business realize that it's a skill. You get a lot of people who are actors or models manqué who think, ‘Oh I'll be a TV weather person’ or, ‘I'll read the news’ and they have no idea of the responsibility or the skill that's needed. It comes as quite a shock. It's a very hard job and it's part of a much bigger skill which is journalism on any level.

A Presenter's Working Day

There really isn't a typical example. Every production team will make different demands of their anchor. Compare two extremes, 1FM's Newsbeat and presenting on a pre-recorded features programme. I've done lots of both. It pays to be this flexible if you want a steady stream of work.

Presentation on Newsbeat, BBC Radio 1FM

The anchor on Newsbeat is a news reporter and a newsreader as well as being the presenter. You muck in with everyone else but have the added duty of being ‘the voice' for the whole fifteen-minute news sequence. The shows run at 1245 and 1745 hours. I was the first female presenter of the programme. Today, once again, it's a woman: Georgina Bowman. Her day looks something like this.

1030: Arrive at 1FM's West London studios ready to rock! The other journalists have been there since 0800. The presenter arrives later specifically so she can bring a fresh perspective and prevent any tendency to following the mainstream news that everyone else is doing. She must have watched and listened to all possible news outlets, particularly the commercial sector, both analogue and digital stations, and she must have read the papers. Her first task is to talk to the day editor and offer new stories or angles on tales already underway. There will be six or seven items in the programme. She'll have to do at least one of them — get the background information, phone the participants, go out to do interviews or arrange for guests to come in or to attend outlying studios for ‘down-the- line’ interviews. Georgina then edits the interviews, scripts them, lays down the voice track and writes the cue. She must also be briefed on the other stories and interviews to be done.

1145: The presenter writes or re-writes all the programme cues working with the editor.

1240: The presenter bundles up the scripts and leaves for the studio which, being en suite, is about five steps away! There's a short time to give level (ensure the volume is OK) and read through the scripts.

Figure 1.2 Georgina Bowman: ‘It's great fun, high profile, hard work!'

1245: On air. The presenter operates her own microphone and that of any guests. A studio assistant in the sound booth next door plays in inserts, the studio producer fires the jingles, the editor oversees the process.

1300: There's a post-programme debrief lasting anything from two to ten minutes. If work allows, there's time for a quick lunch before a completely new evening programme starts into production.

1430: The presenter is back in the studio reading the news after which another package and interviews must be completed for the next show.

1530: The presenter reads another news bulletin and banters with the DJ.

1630: Another news bulletin. More banter, some of it perhaps quite personal. Georgina has to think fast around a presenter like Chris Moyles, who may deliberately ‘drop her in it’.

1700: A final news bulletin before rushing back to the office to write the cues and prepare for the evening programme.

1745: On air with the second edition of Newsbeat.

1800: Programme debrief. Go home and follow all the news happenings throughout the evening in readiness for the next day. Georgina Bowman is on air five days a week but her job requires being a news junkie seven days a week.

1FM's news editor, Rod McKenzie, insists that presenters on this show above all others on Radio One have to be journalists and hard-working ones at that!

They are absolutely news journos because they've got a big copy tasting role. You can't have a ‘gob on a stick’ in a tight team like this. We don't have ‘producers’ in the traditional sense. We only have reporters and senior reporters who are also output editors. Everyone employed is on-air capable. We try to recruit into Newsbeat at the age of 25 so that we're as close as we can be to our target audience. They go out clubbing in the evening and so on, which is important. We used to find a lot of people from the independent stations but they don't do news packages like they used to so they don't have the reporter craft skills. So now we're looking through the journalism colleges. It's not just about finding good journalists; it's about trying to find good journalists with a young head on their shoulders … with a young outlook.

Presentation on magazine and features programmes

Making movies as a presenter on programmes like Countryfile, Holiday or Top Gear which include filmed features, involves a very different schedule. Whilst presenters will sometimes devise, research and film the story, they may also only be needed to front an item that's been produced and scripted by others. The latter requires much less work in advance but heaps of energy and concentration on the day.

Pre-shoot: The producer will call to tell the presenter the story and arrange times and places and will e-mail or fax a draft outline.

Day 1: The presenter meets with the crew on location and is told what questions to ask. The interviewees have been told in advance the point they are expected to make. The presenter does the interviews and the producer listens to ensure the necessary sound bite is obtained. The presenter is given a script to be performed as a series of pieces to camera to wrap around the inserts. Each chunk has to be learned by heart immediately. Such an item would take a few hours to complete — weather and light permitting. At the end of the day the producer returns to base for the cutting and final scripting.

Day 2: When the item is ready, the presenter is again called to lay down the studio voice track. The producer or presenter writes the cue.

Thus a simple four- or five-minute item might only take a couple of days of the presenter's time — on occasions even less. The presenter's responsibility is to make the story appear to be his or her own and to give it the relevant programme style.

The more adept you become at handling diverse presentation styles the better. Ian Gilvear, Development Adviser for BBC Training, has been a reporter, presenter and producer for 25 years. Ask him what his greatest memories are of presentation, done either by himself or others, and you'll see what I mean about variety … and the frightening demands of the job.

I did a long report for Radio Forth in Edinburgh when the city's dead were returned from the Falklands. There was a service in St Giles Cathedral. The OB engineers captured all the actuality and I wrote the script, produced, packaged and presented it myself from the Landrover, which I was glad about, because I was close to the events and wrote it simply, capturing the emotion without becoming over-sentimental. Other memories … Rod Sharpe flawlessly ad libbing cues for a fifteen-minute radio news bulletin during a power failure which deprived us of the scripts … Archie MacPherson filming a sport piece with me while being spat on from above by hostile Dundee United fans … Kirsty Wark trying to stay awake at four in the morning for a satellite link with the US Secretary of State … Mark Goodier doing a breakfast show on his knees because it was the Queen's birthday … me doing live commentary on water-skiing at short notice without knowing the first thing about it … a You & Yours reporter doing a package about a gentle, elderly man who'd lovingly looked after his profoundly disabled wife; she'd lost all power of movement and speech, and could only blink once for yes, twice for no.

Qualities Of A Presenter

Even if we can't say what it is we can at least list some of the qualities you need to be a presenter.

A presenter is … a great communicator

… at least, should be. Good presenters can turn the complex into the comprehensible. They should have great command of the language and an ability to write well (see Kirsty Lang's experiences inChapter 8). There are relatively few presentation jobs where you won't be expected to do at least some writing and if you want to ‘make a script your own’ you really must be able to string a decent sentence together. Erstwhile Conservative Member of Parliament, Edwina Currie, who has made such a successful second career as a radio presenter, gives as her top tips to presenters:

Learn good English and read a lot. Read everything. You're a wordsmith.

Lis Howell, who after nearly 30 years in front of and behind microphones is now teaching television journalism, is keen to impress on aspiring presenters the importance of the story-telling art:

If you're a good journalist you can present anything pretty well because your role as a journalist is to clarify things for the general public. If you're doing presentation because you're good at something else like sewing or being a chef, or being a footballer, there is a role for journalism here too. You become, for example, a ‘gardening journalist’, sort of. You must have that ability to explain complex subjects without patronizing. You've got to be able to say, ‘This is how you make a roux sauce’ or, ‘Beef Wellington’, without making listeners feel stupid. So that's journalism. All journalism is about making things clear and universal.

Of course, simplifying is not enough. Shows have light and shade. A presenter needs to turn from tragedy to comedy without sounding crass. TV and radio can distort things that would have sounded OK in other circumstances. For example, sitting at the breakfast table, you might get away with a conversation about a close friend who has been knocked over in a car accident and then follow it up with a complete non sequitur about a one-legged, talking parrot. Those who know you may accept your strange disparate thoughts and your swift, apparently unsympathetic, transition from sadness to silliness. How different it is when your listeners are strangers and you talk to them through microphones! On air you must use pau...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• I What it is and how to do it
• II Types of presentation
• III Starting out
• Glossary
• Index