- 272 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About This Book
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.
Frequently asked questions
Information
I What it is and how to do it
1 Being a presenter
Presentation is secondary to all other skills. If you want to be āa presenterā, 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.
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 manquĆ© who think, āOh I'll be a TV weather personā or, āI'll read the newsā 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
Presentation on Newsbeat, BBC Radio 1FM
They are absolutely news journos because they've got a big copy tasting role. You can't have a āgob on a stickā in a tight team like this. We don't have āproducersā 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 ā¦ with a young outlook.
Presentation on magazine and features programmes
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 ā¦ Rod Sharpe flawlessly ad libbing cues for a fifteen-minute radio news bulletin during a power failure which deprived us of the scripts ā¦ Archie MacPherson filming a sport piece with me while being spat on from above by hostile Dundee United fans ā¦ Kirsty Wark trying to stay awake at four in the morning for a satellite link with the US Secretary of State ā¦ Mark Goodier doing a breakfast show on his knees because it was the Queen's birthday ā¦ me doing live commentary on water-skiing at short notice without knowing the first thing about it ā¦ 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
A presenter is ā¦ a great communicator
Learn good English and read a lot. Read everything. You're a wordsmith.
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 āgardening journalistā, sort of. You must have that ability to explain complex subjects without patronizing. You've got to be able to say, āThis is how you make a roux sauceā or, āBeef Wellingtonā, without making listeners feel stupid. So that's journalism. All journalism is about making things clear and universal.
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