TV and Radio Programmes

Programmes on radio and television may be referred to formally as broadcasts; and they may be referred to informally as shows, especially in American English.

Programmes or shows on radio and television are often presented or hosted by a programme host. Popular music programmes are presented by disc jockeys or DJs.

News programmes may be hosted, fronted, or anchored by anchors famous in their own right, sometimes more famous than the people in the news.

In more traditional news programmes, the news is read by a newsreader or newscaster (newscaster is now a rather old-fashioned word).

Reporters and correspondents, or television journalists, make reports. They and the camera operators who go with them are news gatherers. Together they form TV crews.

Broadcasters are TV and radio organizations, the people working for them, or, more specifically, the professional media people who actually participate in programmes.

Programmes and reports are transmitted or broadcast live in a live broadcast, with events seen or heard as they happen, or recorded for broadcast later. A recording of an event can be referred to as footage of that event.

A news programme might include:

dramatic footage of events such as war or disasters

interviews and studio discussions: pictures of people participating in these are often referred to as talking heads (an informal expression used to show disapproval of what can be a boring form of television)

vox-pop interviews, or vox-pops getting the reactions of ordinary people, often in the street

clips, or extracts, of any of these things.

People sometimes say that today’s news programmes are infotainment, a mixture of information, and entertainment, something that people watch or listen to for pleasure. Another example of infotainment is docudrama where real events are dramatised and reenacted by actors. This is a combination of documentary and drama: a documentary is a serious factual radio or TV programme.

There is, of course, a lot of competition between broadcasting organizations. Most TV and radio networks want to increase the size of their audience, or their ratings, at the expense of other networks.

Good ratings are especially important during prime time or peak-time, the time of day, or slot, when most people watch TV. Slot also means any short period in broadcasting reserved for a specific purpose.

High audience figures attract more advertising or commercials to be shown in commercial breaks between programmes. Commercials are also known as spots.

The media often talk about rating battles or ratings wars between networks when discussing competition in the industry (И.В. Миголатьева Международная журналистика. – РУДН, 2008).

II. DICTIONARY WORK: Skim the text and find the italicized words, look them up in the monolingual (English-English) dictionary and bilingual (English-Russian) dictionary. Present your findings in class.

III. Answer the following questions using the information from the text:

1) What is a show?

2) Who are shows on radio and TV presented by?

3) What is a DJ?

4) What is a newscaster and why is this word rather old-fashioned now?

5) What do we call the professional media people who actually participate in programmes?

6) What is a live broadcast?

7) What might a news programme include?

8) What do TV and radio networks do to increase the size of their audience?

9) When are good ratings especially important for TV and radio networks?

Дата добавления: 2015-07-11