Why Do News Anchors All Talk the Same?
Whether you’re watching CBS News, CNN, or maybe the satirical Onion News Network, news anchors always sound just about identical. thereupon exaggerated lilt, those vocal cliffhangers, and all-American accents, it’s as if all of them visited the school to be told: “talking head diction.”
Well, turns out, lots of them did. Most broadcaster training programs offer courses dedicated to teaching future announcers a way to speak therein instantly recognizable style.
Another reason why news anchors share speech patterns is that they’re all taught to use standard broadcasting English, a variety of pronunciations within which no letters are dropped. as an example, they need to always say “fishing,” not “fishin’.” They also speak more slowly than people waste way of life so as to be easily understandable, Caples said.
Not all modern-day broadcasters believe in the worth of “the voice,” and it’s going to be fading out among radio announcers. Adamic, a radio host at KOHL 89.3 in California who goes only by his surname and teaches classes within the broadcasting program at Ohlone College, said, “The days of the large announcer voice [said in an exceedingly big announcer voice] went away an extended time ago. The goal of radio now’s to only sound sort of a person — just somebody’s friend, keeping them company as they drive to figure.” instead of having an authoritative voice, nowadays broadcast journalism is all about being relatable, he said.
People who add broadcasting want to develop their voice for TV or radio so they sound professional when speaking into a microphone. Decades ago, finding your broadcast voice was simple; men tried to talk in as deep a voice as possible, while ladies wanted to sound happy as if they’d just baked a pie. Today, such speech sounds artificial within the air, which regularly makes the audience suspicious of what’s being said.
To build a natural-sounding broadcast voice, hear yourself. Record a conversation you’ve got with a fan and compare it to how you sound on the air. What you wish to listen to is the tone of your voice. Too often, a broadcast voice sounds flat, especially once you are reading from a script. the other extreme could be a vocal delivery with a repetitive punch, which sounds more song-like because the pitch goes up and down at an identical rate in each sentence.