ON AIR PERFORMANCE

Just like a good movie makes you forget you're watching a movie because you're so caught up in the story, a good anchor or reporter makes you forget you're watching a newscast. A good anchor or reporter calmly and confidently tells you what's going on no matter what chaos may be going on around him or her.

I am not suggesting that you would be better off getting your training from the drama department than the journalism school. But there is an undeniable performance aspect in telling people the news from in front of a camera. Even when people tell you to "act natural," they're telling you to act.

You must establish command on the set.

The reason is that there is nothing natural about talking to a box with words scrolling up before your eyes while wearing a small speaker in your ear in a room only slightly less lit than direct sunlight on the planet Mercury.

Welcome to the realm of the anchor.

Reporters live in the field also get to hear the dulcet tones of a producer screaming in their ears but with the added distraction of a hectic scene and sometimes heckling bystanders and without the TelePrompTer (And, no, I don't know why it's spelled that way.) telling them what to say.

I wish there were magic words I could put in a paragraph to give you all the command and composure on camera you'd ever need. I regret to report that I haven't found any shortcuts. If you have, please tell me! However, as I've gained experience, there are some specific things I've worked on -- and watched out for -- that I think have made me better.

LIVE, BABY, LIVE

"Don't be nervous." Don't you love when people tell you that? Like you could turn it off with a switch. Tell yourself instead that it's OK to be nervous. I still get butterflies sometimes and one former colleague who's been doing this for 30 years says he cannot have a good show UNLESS he IS nervous.

Show me. Tell me.

In live shots, it's easy to get caught up in the energy of the scene or in your own nervousness so beware not to speak too loudly or too quickly. I also make it a point not to memorize what I'm going to say. If you try to recite a script verbatim, one minor flub can turn into a major disaster. I write a few key words on a reporter's notebook, run through what I might want to say a couple of times before I go on and then just tell people what happened with my notebook for reference if I need it.

You can make your live shot easier and more effective in telling your story if you can "show & tell." The pictures on the left come from a live shot I did from a high school football field. I started with the field behind me and then walked to my right to a shot in which you could see both the stadium scoreboard and the town's water tower farther in the background with the words "Bartow High School, 1996 Class 4-A State Champions" painted on them as I explained that not just the school but the entire town was proud of the state championship the team the team had won that year. Then I walked back to the place I started (and where the lighting was better) and finished introducing my package.

"WATCH YOUR HEAD, BOB"

Your name might not be Bob but it might be what your head is doing as you talk. Some anchors and reporters overemphasize important words in their copy by bobbing their heads as they say them. Variations of this theme include the anchor's head swivelling back and forth and unconscious twitches of arms and shoulders as he or she reads. Look for these things next time you watch a newscast. I bet you see at least one anchor doing some bobbing, twitching or swiveling, often in combination with another insidious anchoring practice: the "news voice."

SPEAKING VS. ANNOUNCING

I don't know exactly where it starts but I can theorize: In the early days of radio, announcers must have rumbling baritone voices so people can hear them through the scratchy signal they get on their receivers. Aspiring announcers who don't naturally have deep voices have to fake one and -- voila! -- the "news voice" is born.

Then people growing up with ideas of reading the news on radio or television hear people with these "news voices" and develop their own.

Sometimes I'm calm and collected.

Sometimes I'm loud and in your face.

My anchoring and reporting vastly improved when I stopped trying to sound like an announcer and started trying to sound like me. Audience research has shown that viewers respond better to reporters and anchors to talk to them rather than announce at them. At my best on camera, you can't tell that I'm reading what I'm saying to you.

If you happen to have a rich authoritative sounding baritone, great! If not, you don't need to use your best impersonation of one. You do want to speak clearly but if you hear yourself trying to sound more impressive and "reporter-like," chances are viewers hear someone who sounds phony. They don’t list that as an endearing quality.

If you have trouble sounding conversational when recording the audio track for packages, here are a few ideas:

1. Dump the countdown before you begin talking. Nothing takes you out of a good speaking rhythm than having to start by saying 3, 2, 1...

2. If you can, record your audio track into a camera deck using its field mic. I began to notice how much stronger my voice sounded and how much more conversational I sounded in standups (obviously recorded into a camera deck with a field mic) than I did in the audio track I had recorded in a booth. Recording into the camera did the trick. I don't know if the sound recording equipment in a field camera is better than the stuff in most stations’ audio booths but I do know recording my audio track in the camera has worked well for me.

3. I do sometimes intentionally "over-inflect" my voice knowing that by the time my audio is edited into the package I won’t sound as phony as I felt when I recorded it. Recording and listening to yourself will help you distinguish when you're overdoing it too much.

4. Last, check your script. Sometimes bad reading is caused by poor writing. If your copy is awkward, stilted or overly officious, you’re going to sound that way. Fix the script and reading it will become easier.

If the problem doesn't come from recording quality or script quality but just the way you read your copy, there's a way to fix that. Practice.

PRACTICE MAKES PERFECT

Practice is something I still do after more than a dozen years in television that no one else I know does. If you wanted to play professional basketball, you’d practice shooting wouldn’t you?

"Talent" can be acquired through practice.

Do you have a home video camera? How about talking to that just like you were doing a live shot? You can even turn on the TV or the stereo to simulate the noise you’d have to contend with if you were doing a live shot from a chaotic accident scene or celebration.

Practice reading aloud. That's an essential skill for anchoring, heck, for some anchors it's the only skill! Yet when people would catch me reading wire copy aloud in the newsroom, they'd look at me cross-eyed. Enough stations publish their news scripts on their web sites that you can sit in front of the very computer you're at now and practice reading broadcast copy aloud.

I like to read books aloud, especially novels, because reading dialogue gives me work on reading conversationally. "Reading conversationally" is as much of an oxymoron as "acting naturally" so it's a skill that must be acquired. I've also found that the more good writing I read – whether it's novels, newspapers, or magazines – the more good writing I write.

Writing ranks as television news' most underrated and valuable skill. If you have a computer, access to the internet and friends to correspond with via e-mail, you have an easy way to practice it. You can always find a job in television if you can write good copy quickly. That’s the thing that will separate not only your story from all the other things people could watch instead but it’s what will separate you from other people applying for the same job.

It is in television as it is in life: Practice and prepare and you will prosper.