Audio/Visual Impact-
I noticed that even as they are reading from the teleprompter, that all of the newscasters glance down often. Videos and sound bites are also used after every couple of sentences in order to break up the program and making it more intractable for listeners and watchers. Another noticeable feature was how when the focus is on the newscaster, they always seem really stiff and awkwardly shake their heads as the sentences go up and down. As the sentence is coming to an end, they typically tilt their head down.
I'm not sure if it is just my television or not, but the mouths are not in line accurately with the voices. It is almost as if they are speaking to fast for it to keep up. They also keep their focus straight when the person next to them is speaking, and only occasionally they will glance over and nod in agreement with what they are saying.
Timelines-
Before the newscaster begins speaking, I have noticed that they all take a deep breath and then immediately start speaking. In order to keep things short but accurate, they often use the word "now" in order to transition from one sentence to the next without actually having to stop and then start up again on a new sentence. Even when they do start a new sentence, their is such a small pause that it almost seems like one long run-on sentence.
Even the weather man seems like he needs to be rushed a bit. All of his sentences are very prompt and to the point.
Information not explanation-
They definitely simplify everything that they say in order to appeal to their listeners. Another thing that I noticed, is how they really try and make things conversational as much as they can. The weather man, when talking about the possible snow that will occur in West Virginia this week, called it little specks of white. By speaking like this, it doesn't make us feel dumb, it just makes it quicker for us to take in what he is saying as he quickly moves on to the next bit of information. He also referred to wednesday as "Hump day" which is a popular reference to that specific day of the week, and by him using it, it shows that they are really trying to appeal to what we want.
The newscasters always give enough information to understand the story, but they never go into full on detail of why something happened. However, they do mention that if we want to know more about a particular story, then we should stay tuned for later when they have more information for us.
