Timing a newscast is tough. There’s no other way to say it. Even experienced producers find themselves banging their heads against the wall during some newscasts. Especially when you want to encourage your reporters to turn compelling packages that tell stories instead of just spitting out facts. A tweet I recently saw by a producer made me concerned though. It said that good storytelling beats out making meter points. Here’s the deal: If you don’t hit meter points, you can and likely will blow your ratings. Then you, the producer, will lose your job. But it should not come to that because you can do both. Storytelling should not cook the clocks. It should set the clocks so you can maximize the team effort and boost the ratings. Here’s how.
Timing, one block at a time
- Hide some pad
- Write accordion copy
- Segment it out
When I timed newscasts, I treated each block as a mini-show. That means, as all producers are aware, that you must have elements to help you stretch and elements you can dump to save time. I did this first with hidden pad time. I would round up the time for the cold open or the teases to buy a little wiggle room. I would add a few seconds to any chat time designed within a block. I even rounded up my commercial break times so I would have a few seconds to take if I needed.
Then I wrote a vo/sot/tag or two that could stand without the bite if I needed. Just script it with that tag as a third page so you can quickly kill the bite. I also would add an extra fact at the end of a vo, that the anchors could use to transition with (see Anchors don’t have chemistry ) that I could easily dump. I called it accordion copy. I could have the anchors read it all and make time, or I could chop a section and the story still made sense and I made up time.
Segment out your work when appropriate. This includes the story telling from reporters. For an explanation of how to do this read “Produce it up ” Here’s a quick summary. Have the reporter give you an interesting element for your intro, and some additional information for the anchor tag. If you can, make that anchor tag a vo or graphic with a line at the beginning that could stand alone. This way, if the package comes in long, you have a quick way to make the time up. The anchors read the first line of the tag and the graphic or vo is gone. I tried to segment out one story per block, where I created interesting elements over several script pages. This made the newscast look different, gave me a creative edge, and helped me have an easy way to make up time without giving up important content. If I was in a timing pinch the viewer still got the facts, just not some of the flash.
All of the above mentioned scenarios are ways to story tell. Remember, reporters don’t get all the dibs on storytelling. Reporters should be encouraged to tell interesting stories instead of reporting facts. Producers also need to emphasize the big picture, especially for those reporters that tend to chronically go long and turn in stories late. You know, the ones who then say they “can’t help it, they are storytelling.” Field crews should let you know if they are going long early enough for you to make a plan. It’s basic respect for the overall product. If you get stuck with a chronic “late and longer,” the tricks I just shared should still help you story tell without cooking all of the clocks.
