Your anchors have just finished the first two weeks of rating period. They've produced sweeps series pieces in addition to recording daily topicals, news updates and radio spots. You want to finish the book with a bang, but they're dragging. You can't help yourself. You walk up to them and say, "C'mon, folks, pick up the pace." 

Right thought, but possibly the wrong words. To most anchors, increasing pace can mean reading faster (and, more often than not, reading louder). The results can be calamitous. To read faster, your anchors must focus more on the prompter and less on connecting with the viewer behind the words. They stumble over those words more frequently, and begin to miss the obvious points of emphasis in their stories. Result? They sound hurried and disengaged.

Tips for Pacier Newscasts

A fundamental precept of the Coaching Company’s Total Station Coaching is that on-air talent performance is only one component of a faster paced newscast. We recommend you coach your entire production team on the ways they can enhance pace, so that your anchors don't have to go it alone.

To avoid the talk faster/louder issue, coach your anchors instead to heighten their emphases and vocal variety in their stories, and perhaps to increase their facial expression. And be sure they're talking over interstitials, not breaking the audio track by waiting for the music.

Coach your reporters to shorten their live package leadins and eliminate all superfluous copy inside bites. Encourage them to commit fully to their stories so that viewers can readily see that their stories are worth listening to.

Coach your directors on the real key to pacing up a newscast: shortening the spaces between events. In other words, punch tighter. Encourage them to go to NATS full for a moment before your anchors read their VOs, and to hit location keys at first video or as soon as possible.

Coach your producers to shorten copy and the length of sentences in that copy, a huge drain on an anchor’s energy. Look specifically at leadins, which should be no more than 2 sentences. Talk to them about relieving the anchors in long shared 2 Shot leads by cutting to the second anchor for the remainder of the read. Talk to them about increasing the number of graphic elements, especially full screens, which take the anchors off camera for a moment.

Coach your camera operators to zoom in slightly on 2 and 3 Shots. If you’re lucky enough too have robotic camera heads, increase the zoom speed.

Coach your audio techs to fade music beds more slowly after opens and interstitials. Encourage them to hit themes full in teases. Ask them to be sure that all NATS and the mixes beneath sports highlights are loud enough to be heard.

You can effectively increase the pace of your newscasts by talking with your team. Your entire team.