The news bulletin is a way of keeping your listeners up to date with daily events. It should include a mix of stories, some heavy and some light. Some stories should be about major political events and others should focus on ordinary people and their lives. The overall balance and tone of the bulletin will depend to some extent on the format of your station; serious national broadcasters are likely to have more serious and detailed stories while youth-oriented music stations may have lighter and brighter stories about popular culture.
There is rarely enough time on radio for all the stories you might want to run in a bulletin, so ranking your stories according to their importance will help ensure that you get the most important items in. The order of the stories will also influence their tone and pace. If the bulletin is too long and complicated it can lose listeners’ attention. Similarly, a short bulletin may be stale if it only includes a string of economic stories.
Using sound bites will help to make the bulletin more attractive for listeners. These can be as simple as a five or 10-second audio clip inserted in a voice report, or as short as stand-alone 20 or 25-second clips. Unlike headlines, these clips should not be used to draw the audience in; they are meant to provide context and help listeners understand the importance of your story.
A good newsreader will know how long it takes them to read a piece of news script, and will be able to tell you the number of words per second they can manage. It is a good idea to ask a colleague to time you while you read through a short script, and write the number of seconds down as you go.
