Impromptu Radio Broadcasting
Good morning and welcome to WONO Radio! We're gonna kick off your morning by teaching you how to prepare your very own broadcast. As we did with the weather forecasting, we're gonna have to get you a personality. It's time for you to design your character. This is your chance to have fun and be creative. You are the DJ, you make the rules. Come up up with your station’s call letters and your own name to go by. Your character can be as whacky or serious as you want it to be, but it should be something you can pull off. Remember though, like djtechtools.com suggests, sometimes keeping it simple is best.
Now there's going to be one major change for this event that you aren't used to, you have 30 minutes to prepare your broadcast. In fact, you will be put in a large room with all the other competitors and each of you will be given a news packet. This packet will have international, national, and local news, sports, weather, and commercials all in a manilla folder. I'm gonna be honest, there will be more material than you will know what to do with or be able to use. In fact there's gonna be so much that you won't even be able to read it all in the 30 minutes you're given for prep. Now that I've said that you're probably wondering, "Well what am I supposed to do then?". That's a great question. Fortunately, it's one that I have an answer for.
You're gonna have to skim. Read quickly. Highlight as you go, pick out the main parts, the highlights and headlines. See what I did there? Sometimes we're given more than one international or national story in the packet. Remember, your broadcast has to be exactly 5 minutes long. How much you can fit into that time depends on how quickly you read. You might need to choose just one of the two international stories. Maybe one of the stories is super short and you can do both. Go with your gut. What do you think the audience wants to hear? Honestly, the minutes from the senate hearing are only so interesting (yes, I was given those in a packet one time and there were over 20 pages) so I summed up the results in 15 seconds instead of reading all the discussions.
That brings me to my next point, don't read verbatim. Summarize, don't walk in there with the papers the same way they were handed to you. Highlight what you want to cover, make notes, circle, underline, whatever works for you. Some competitors like to cut out the parts they want to use and tape them to a notepad. Skim. You will not be able to read everything. Choose the most interesting, the most relevant, and the best information from the story and use it. The other reason you need to blaze your own trail is that the other five competitors in your room have the same news. If you read word-for-word you'll all be the same: boring. You want to stand out. Make jokes, talk about the story, show that you understand what's going on.
Two things before we go live on the air.
1. You sit behind the judge to convey the idea that they are listening to the radio (just your voice) so don't worry what kind of faces you make getting the vocal quality you need. That also means you don't have to make any kind of eye contact so you can read straight from the script.
2. 30 minutes is the total time you have to get to your room to compete, so leave 5 minutes to find the place. Also leave 5-10 minutes to go over your final notes. You don't want the first time you run over them to be in the round. This lets you flow more smoothly and not stumble over tough names. And with that, we're live! Click the video below for an example of the broadcast.
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