Newsreaders, reporters and presenters

Many broadcasters and celebrities think that 10 years reading the news or recording dozens of voiceovers automatically makes them professional.

It does not. It might make them more comfortable in front of a camera or microphone, but they would be practising mistakes because without a technique they can’t recognise where they’re going wrong.

Some news readers and reporters have good personalities and are popular, but when it comes to reading a teleprompt/autocue, most of them read too fast, run one sentence into the next and talk in a monotone.


Reporters are university educated and do a great job and very often a brave one. The only training they need is to read a script and teleprompt/autocue to a high professional standard. In spite of employing ‘trainers’, none of them has a specific technique for the professional delivery of words, which is essential.
It’s the one thing that presenters need more than anything else!

These journalists enjoy a certain celebrity status. This makes them strong candidates to record television voiceovers; and being known to the public they could earn $/£ 10.000 (or even more) for one hour's work.

The question is, how many can you name (excluding actors) who are reasonably famous yet rarely, if ever, do a voiceover? They would not turn down tens of thousands of dollars or pounds. The truth is that most of them are not asked; they simply don’t have the required technique!

I’ve already mentioned untrained voiceovers, but newsreaders and reporters have the same problems.

Unimportant words are being emphasised – ‘is’, ‘and’, ‘are’, ‘we’, ‘you’ and ‘your’.

Reporters fail to recognise the most important words.

Without a technique, they are forced to create their own rules when reading a script or the autocue/teleprompt.

Because of their lack of professional training, many of them emphasise the last word in every SENTENCE. They do it all the TIME. They do it so often it drives me MAD. This is by no means the only irritating habit used by broadcasters!


I recently asked a well-known BBC political presenter about the training she had been offered. Her terse response was, 'What training?'

A BBC reporter was on the PSR™ course recently. She told me that one of their trainers comes round every three months and suggests the best way to improve is by copying someone you like.

Firstly, you can’t copy Andreas Boccelli to become an opera singer; in any case, the broadcaster you’d be copying has probably not been trained in a specific technique either!

Without this technique, there is also a tendency to be monotonous and run words and sentences into each other.

Here are two examples: Just listen to the knowledgeable Greta van Susteren. She is a prime example of what not to do when you are reporting the news, weather or traffic, particularly when reading a teleprompt – way too fast!


Voice Master trains many journalists, but sadly most of them have to pay for it themselves because their employers don’t understand the importance of correct training.

The BBC is the only broadcasting company to use the PSR™ Method to train their newsreaders and reporters.

Some of the best documentary productions can be seen on the Discovery channels. These programmes are made by experts at costs running into hundreds of thousands of dollars/pounds. For some reason, when they are shown in the UK, they frequently use voiceovers who are untrained. There are many Discovery Channels and they average 50% untrained voiceovers.

The BBC is just as guilty. It produces amazing documentaries but yet again, it spoils the production with an untrained voice.

The BBC spent a small fortune producing a documentary called Time Machine. It was an excellent production but the TV Times said, ‘It was spoilt by the boring narration by Jeremy Vine.’ He is an expert in his own field, but has not been trained to deliver words correctly.

The BBC, Fox, ABC, NBC and CNN regularly use untrained voiceovers.

A well-known television company employed two continuity announcers for three years. When they made them redundant, part of their severance package was to send them on the PSR™ course at Voice Master to train them to read professionally.

Why didn't they train them in the first place? I suppose that would require common sense!

The TV ratings war

We read every week about the ratings war between the major broadcasting companies – CNN, Fox, NBC, BBC, Sky and ABC. Basically, television companies have two main purposes - to communicate fiction (films, comedies, drama etc.) and to present facts (news, documentaries and current affairs). When reading a script or teleprompt on television, too many reporters and newsreaders race through the report, emphasising the wrong words, and not knowing what to do at the end of a sentence (and I don't mean stop and breathe).

This lack of technique substantially reduces the listeners' level of retention, as a study by the Fondation de la Recherche Psychologique shows.

It is clear that the PSR™ Method would put presenters, newsreaders and reporters in charge, giving them more confidence and the audience more confidence in them. This in turn will contribute towards higher ratings.

Who in their right mind would prefer to listen to an untrained, irritating presenter?

David Hill, one of the top executives for Fox World Sports, is a brilliant producer. Some time ago in London, he produced one of the best videos I’ve ever seen. It was part of a presentation to be made by Rupert Murdoch to potential investors. I was chosen as the voiceover.

On a recent working trip to Los Angeles I suggested to David that Fox might train its staff in the PSR™ Method. After all, if it’s good enough for the BBC, it should be good enough for FOX. He told me that FOX already employs trainers.
Of course it does!
So do all the broadcasters, but none of them train its staff in a technique because it doesn’t have one.

These broadcasting companies could improve their ratings and save a great deal of money.

For more detailed information, simply download our booklet and free CD, ‘Talk Your Way to Success™'
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