Broadcast journalism

In short

Broadcast journalism is the gathering, writing, production and transmission of news through sound and moving pictures — radio, television and now streamed and social video. It differs from print in that the audience hears and sees the story once, in real time, so the writing is written for the ear, the pictures carry half the meaning, and every item is cut to a measured duration. In India it is practised under the Prasar Bharati Act, 1990 for AIR and Doordarshan, and under the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 with its Programme and Advertising Codes plus the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting's uplinking/downlinking guidelines for private channels. BJMC papers examine it heavily (formats, scripting, production chain, regulation), and it is the core technical round for trainee jobs at NDTV, India Today/Aaj Tak, Network18, Times Network, Republic, ABP, Asianet, Mathrubhumi, DD News, AIR and digital newsrooms such as The Quint and ThePrint.

Explained

Nature of the medium: radio, television, digital

• Radio uses only sound — voice, actuality (real-location sound), music, effects and silence. It is immediate, cheapest to produce, works on a phone and a feature phone, and reaches low-literacy and low-bandwidth audiences; its limit is that nothing can be shown and the listener cannot go back.
• Television adds pictures, so it is strong on visual events and weak on abstract subjects (budgets, verdicts), which must be carried by graphics. It is costly, equipment-bound and crew-dependent.
• Digital/OTT video is on demand, vertical as often as horizontal, watched muted (hence burnt-in subtitles), and measured by views and watch-time rather than ratings.
• Transmission basics: AIR uses medium-wave and short-wave AM plus FM; private radio occupies the FM band 88–108 MHz. Indian television was built on the PAL 625-line, 25 frames-per-second standard — SD 720×576 (4:3), HD 1920×1080 (16:9) — and is distributed by terrestrial (DD Free Dish), cable, DTH and IPTV/OTT.
• Private FM radio may not produce its own news. Under the FM Phase-III policy, FM stations may broadcast All India Radio bulletins unaltered; community radio stations were similarly permitted to carry AIR bulletins verbatim. News on radio therefore remains largely an AIR function — a favourite exam point.

Writing for broadcast ("write for the ear")

1. One idea per sentence, 12–18 words, subject–verb–object, active voice, present or present-perfect tense ("The Supreme Court has ruled…").
2. Attribution comes first, not last: "The Election Commission says…" — the listener must know the source before the claim.
3. Round the numbers — "nearly 12 crore" not "11,96,43,000"; spell difficult words phonetically in the script (Thiru-vanan-tha-puram).
4. Avoid pronouns with unclear antecedents, subordinate clauses, abbreviations the ear cannot decode, quotation marks (nobody hears them) and "yesterday/today" ambiguity in a repeated bulletin.
5. Write to picture: the words must not fight the visual. If the shot is a flooded street, do not describe the budget; use pause and nat sound to let pictures breathe.
6. Read the script aloud before it goes to the anchor; anything you stumble over, the anchor will too.
7. Reading speed: roughly 140–160 words per minute in English and 110–130 wpm in Hindi and most Indian languages. Scripts are planned on this rate.
8. Cue words: scripts carry the in-cue and out-cue (first and last three words of a clip) plus duration, so the control room knows when to come out.

Formats and the elements of a TV news story

• Dry anchor / reader (RDR): anchor reads to camera, no visuals.
• AVO / VO (anchor voice-over): anchor's voice over pictures; AVO-byte adds a soundbite.
• Soundbite / SOT / byte: a quote on camera, usually 10–20 seconds.
• PTC (piece to camera): reporter speaks on location — opening PTC (sets the scene), bridge PTC (links two ideas), sign-off PTC with name, channel and place.
• Package (PKG): the complete reported story, 1:30–2:30, built as VO + bites + PTC + nat sound + graphics, with an anchor intro (lead-in) and sometimes a back-announcement.
• Live elements: two-way/live cross (anchor questions reporter on location), phono (voice on phone over a still), walk-through (reporter moving through the location), vox pop (public opinion clips).
• Graphics: lower third / aston / super (name strip), ticker/scroll, bug (channel logo), full-screen charts, locator maps, chroma-key virtual sets.
• Other forms: headlines, news capsule, special report, investigation, debate/panel discussion, interview (one-to-one, panel, doorstop/ambush), documentary and feature (longer, theme-led, sound-rich).
• Radio equivalents: radio bulletin, radio report, voice dispatch, actuality-led report, radio talk, phone-in, radio feature and radio documentary.

The production chain: field to transmission

1. Assignment: the input/assignment desk allocates stories from the diary (planned events) and the news flow (breaking).
2. Gathering — ENG (electronic news gathering): reporter + camera person with an ENG camera, lapel/lavalier and gun/boom mic, light, tripod. Shoot a sequence (ELS, LS, MS, CU, ECU), get cutaways and B-roll to avoid jump cuts, respect the 180-degree rule, set white balance, use three-point lighting (key, fill, back) for interviews.
3. Feeding: physical card drop, FTP/IP transfer, cellular bonding backpacks (LiveU, TVU), or DSNG — a satellite van uplinking on Ku-band for a live. SNG/OB: an OB (outside broadcast) van carries a multi-camera set-up with its own vision mixer for events; DSNG is the smaller news-live vehicle.
4. Writing and editing: script into the newsroom computer system (ENPS, iNews or in-house), voicing in a booth, cut on a non-linear editor (Avid, Adobe Premiere, Final Cut, EDIUS) with graphics from Viz/Chyron.
5. Rundown (running order): the bulletin's item-by-item plan — slug, format, duration, cumulative time, video source, anchor, back-time.
6. Output: the producer and PCR (production control room) execute it — vision mixer, audio console, character generator, teleprompter; MCR (master control room) handles transmission, ad insertion and logging.
7. Legal and ethical gate: the output editor clears names of minors and rape survivors, sub-judice content, sting footage and unverified claims before air.

Anchoring and presentation

• Voice: pitch, pace, pause, modulation, stress on the operative word; breath control; neutral pronunciation with correct place and person names.
• Delivery: eye contact through the teleprompter, controlled gesture, no ad-lib errors; ad-libbing on breaking news from the IFB (earpiece) instructions.
• Presentation discipline: no opinion in a news read, no laughing over a tragedy, correct back-timing so the bulletin ends exactly on the clock.
• Dress and set: mid-tones, no fine stripes (moiré), no jangling jewellery near the mic.

Regulation of broadcasting in India

• Prasar Bharati Act, 1990: constitutes Prasar Bharati as the autonomous public broadcaster running All India Radio and Doordarshan; AIR's News Services Division is the largest news operation in the country by bulletin count. Lok Sabha TV and Rajya Sabha TV were merged into Sansad TV (2021).
• Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 and its Rules: Rule 6 Programme Code and Rule 7 Advertising Code bind every channel carried on cable; advertising is capped at 12 minutes per clock hour. The 2021 amendment to the Rules gave statutory shape to a three-tier grievance mechanism — (i) the broadcaster, (ii) a self-regulatory body of broadcasters, (iii) an Inter-Departmental Committee under the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.
• Policy Guidelines for Uplinking and Downlinking of Television Channels, 2022 (replacing the 2011 guidelines): prior MIB permission to run a channel; higher net-worth requirement for a news and current-affairs channel than for a non-news channel; obligation to telecast public-service content on themes of national importance; easier rules for live telecast of events. The exact net-worth and content-duration figures are revised from time to time — check the current MIB notification before quoting them.
• Self-regulation: the NBDSA (News Broadcasting & Digital Standards Authority) of the NBDA, headed by a former judge, hears complaints against news channels and can order apologies and fines; the BCCC under the IBDF handles non-news general entertainment. Their orders are not statutory but are usually complied with.
• Digital news video additionally falls under the IT (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, Part III, which applies a Code of Ethics and the same three-tier redressal to publishers of news and current affairs online.
• TRAI regulates carriage, tariff and quality of service, including the regulation requiring advertisement loudness not to exceed programme loudness, measured by the ITU-R BS.1770 method.
• A draft Broadcasting Services (Regulation) Bill intended to replace the 1995 Act has been circulated for consultation but, to the best of current knowledge, has not been enacted — verify its status before citing it in an exam.
• Election period: the Model Code of Conduct, the 48-hour silence period before polling and the ban on broadcasting exit-poll results during the notified window apply to broadcasters directly.

Measurement, economics and limitations

• BARC India is the sole TV audience measurement body, using people-meters on a panel of households; it now reports Impressions (in 000s) — average individuals viewing — alongside ratings, replacing the older household TRP language.
• Radio audiences are estimated by listenership surveys; digital video by platform analytics (views, watch-time, completion rate).
• Revenue: spot advertising sold on rating points, sponsorship, carriage/placement fees, subscription under DTH/cable, and digital monetisation.
• Advantages: immediacy, mass reach including non-readers, emotional impact of voice and picture, live accountability (an interview cannot be rewritten).
• Limitations: transience (no re-reading), tyranny of the visual (a story without pictures is under-reported), shallow treatment forced by duration, cost, "breaking news" pressure that defeats verification, and TRP-driven sensationalism.

Key points

• Broadcast journalism — news told through sound and picture, in fixed durations, for one-time reception.
• Write for the ear — short active sentences, present tense, attribution first, rounded numbers, read aloud before air.
• Reading speed — about 140–160 wpm in English, 110–130 wpm in Indian languages; all durations are planned on this.
• PTC — reporter to camera on location; the sign-off PTC carries name, channel and place.
• SOT/byte — a recorded on-camera quote; the script gives its in-cue, out-cue and duration.
• Package — the full reported story (VO + bytes + PTC + nat sound + graphics) with an anchor intro.
• Rundown — item-wise running order with durations and back-timing; the producer's control document.
• ENG vs OB vs DSNG — single-crew news shooting; multi-camera event van; satellite van for lives.
• PCR and MCR — production control room executes the bulletin; master control handles transmission.
• PAL 25 fps — India's legacy television standard; 1 second = 25 frames in timecode arithmetic.
• Prasar Bharati Act, 1990 — statutory autonomy for AIR and Doordarshan.
• Cable TV Act, 1995 — Programme Code and Advertising Code; 12 minutes of ads per clock hour; three-tier redressal since the 2021 Rules.
• Uplinking/Downlinking Guidelines, 2022 — permission regime for channels, public-service content obligation.
• NBDSA — self-regulatory authority for news channels; BCCC for non-news; IT Rules 2021 Part III for digital news.
• Private FM cannot air own news — only AIR bulletins carried unaltered.
• BARC Impressions — current TV audience currency, replacing household-TRP phrasing.
• Nat sound and pause — silence and location sound are editorial tools, not dead air.
• Transience — the audience hears it once, so clarity beats cleverness.

Formulas and examples

Example 1 — Script length for a VO. A 400-word newspaper story must become a 40-second anchor voice-over read at 150 wpm.

• Words needed = (40 ÷ 60) × 150 = 100 words.
• So 300 words of the print copy must go: keep the what-happened, the one number that matters and one attribution.
• If the same 100 words are read in Hindi at 120 wpm, duration = (100 ÷ 120) × 60 = 50 s — 10 seconds over, so the Hindi script must be cut to (40 ÷ 60) × 120 = 80 words.

Example 2 — Back-timing a 30-minute bulletin. Total = 30 × 60 = 1,800 s. Fixed elements: two ad breaks of 120 s each = 240 s; promos 60 s; headlines 60 s; anchor welcome and sign-off 40 s.

• Editorial time = 1,800 − (240 + 60 + 60 + 40) = 1,400 s.
• If the bulletin carries 14 stories, average duration = 1,400 ÷ 14 = 100 s per story.
• Give the lead story a 2:30 package (150 s) and a 60 s two-way = 210 s; the remaining 13 stories share 1,400 − 210 = 1,190 s, i.e. about 92 s each.

Example 3 — Timecode arithmetic (25 fps). A byte runs from in-point 01:12:30:10 to out-point 01:14:05:00.

• Frames: 00 − 10 → borrow 1 s: 25 − 10 = 15 frames.
• Seconds: 05 − 1 (borrowed) = 4; 4 − 30 → borrow 1 min: 64 − 30 = 34 s.
• Minutes: 13 − 12 = 1 min. Hours: 1 − 1 = 0.
• Duration = 00:01:34:15 = 94 + 15/25 = 94.6 s. At 150 wpm the anchor's lead-in of 30 words adds (30 ÷ 150) × 60 = 12 s, so the item occupies 106.6 s in the rundown.

Example 4 — Ratings, GRP and CPRP. A channel runs 10 spots for an advertiser; the average TVR per spot is 2.5% in a target universe of 4 crore individuals. Campaign cost ₹5,00,000. Net reach is 20% of the universe.

• GRP = 10 × 2.5 = 25.
• Average frequency = GRP ÷ reach = 25 ÷ 20 = 1.25 exposures per person reached.
• CPRP = 5,00,000 ÷ 25 = ₹20,000 per rating point.
• Impressions per spot = 2.5% × 4 crore = 10 lakh individuals; total gross impressions = 10 × 10 lakh = 1 crore.

Example 5 — Feeding a story from the field. A 10-minute HD recording at 25 Mbit/s must reach the newsroom over a 4 Mbit/s bonded uplink.

• Duration = 600 s; data = 25 × 600 = 15,000 Mbit; file size = 15,000 ÷ 8 = 1,875 MB ≈ 1.83 GB.
• Upload time = 15,000 ÷ 4 = 3,750 s = 62.5 minutes — far too slow for a bulletin in 20 minutes, so the reporter sends only the 90-second cut (file 15,000 × 90/600 = 2,250 Mbit → 2,250 ÷ 4 = 562.5 s ≈ 9.4 min) or goes live by phono.
• Carrier check: an AIR medium-wave transmitter on 1,000 kHz has λ = 3 × 10⁸ ÷ 1 × 10⁶ = 300 m; an FM station on 100 MHz has λ = 3 × 10⁸ ÷ 1 × 10⁸ = 3 m — which is why FM needs line-of-sight and MW travels far.

Where it is used

• National and regional news channels — Aaj Tak, NDTV, India Today, News18 and its state channels, ABP, TV9, Asianet News, Manorama News, Sun News, ETV Bharat: roles of reporter, input/output desk producer, anchor, video editor, PCR director, graphics artist.
• Public broadcasting — DD News and AIR News Services Division bulletins in dozens of languages, Sansad TV proceedings coverage, DD Kisan and farm broadcasts.
• Radio — AIR FM Rainbow/Gold news and current affairs, private FM for AIR bulletin relays and RJ-led public-interest programming, and over 500 community radio stations doing local development programming.
• Digital newsrooms and OTT — The Quint, ThePrint, Scroll, Newslaundry, Lallantop, YouTube and vertical-video desks of legacy channels; skills in mobile journalism, subtitling and short-form editing.
• Corporate, government and agency work — PIB and state DIPR video units, CSR and sustainability films, internal communication video, DD/AIR empanelled production houses, video PR and ad-film voicing.
• Technical and support roles — DSNG and OB van operations, MCR transmission executives, media asset management, BARC/agency media planning using GRP and CPRP.

Interview questions

• Q: What is the difference between a VO and a package? A: A VO is the anchor's voice over pictures with no reporter presence; a package is a self-contained reported story with the reporter's voice, bytes, PTC and sign-off, introduced by an anchor lead-in.
• Q: Why do we write in the present tense for broadcast? A: Because the audience hears it as it happens; the present and present-perfect tenses make the news sound current and keep sentences short.
• Q: How many words will you write for a 30-second read? A: About 70–80 words in English at 150 wpm, and about 60 in Hindi at 120 wpm — the script is always timed by reading it aloud.
• Q: What are in-cue and out-cue, and why are they in the script? A: The first and last few words of a clip; they tell the PCR and anchor exactly when the clip starts and ends so the hand-back is clean.
• Q: Difference between OB and DSNG? A: An OB van is a multi-camera production unit for events with its own mixer; a DSNG is a smaller satellite-uplink vehicle used mainly to put a reporter or a feed live on air.
• Q: Can a private FM station broadcast its own news bulletin in India? A: No — under the FM policy it may only carry All India Radio bulletins unaltered; original news remains with AIR.
• Q: Which law binds a television channel's content on cable? A: The Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 and its Rules, chiefly the Programme Code and Advertising Code, with a three-tier grievance mechanism added by the 2021 amendment to the Rules.
• Q: What does NBDSA do? A: It is the self-regulatory authority of the news broadcasters' association that hears viewer complaints against news channels and can direct apologies, edits or fines; its orders are not statutory but are generally obeyed.
• Q: What has replaced TRP in Indian TV measurement talk? A: BARC India now reports Impressions — the average number of individuals viewing — though "rating" and GRP are still used for planning.
• Q: You have a strong story but no visuals. What do you do? A: Carry it as a dry anchor read or build it with graphics, archive footage clearly labelled as file, documents on screen, a phono or a studio two-way — never dress it with unrelated pictures.
• Q: A live caller makes a defamatory allegation on air. What is your response? A: Interrupt and distance the channel immediately, state that the claim is unverified and offer the other side a response; the broadcaster remains liable for what it transmits.
• Q: What is back-timing? A: Working backwards from the bulletin's fixed end time so that the remaining items fit exactly, letting the producer drop or stretch stories to hit the clock.

Common mistakes

• Writing print prose for air — long sentences, subordinate clauses, attribution at the end — which the anchor cannot read and the listener cannot follow.
• Not timing the script: handing in 200 words for a 60-second slot, so the bulletin overshoots and an item is dropped live.
• Words fighting pictures, or using unrelated and unlabelled archive footage as if it were today's visual.
• Treating file/archive, graphics and reconstructions as actuality, or using a sting or a crime scene without legal clearance.
• Forgetting legal bars in the rush — naming a minor or a sexual-assault survivor, carrying sub-judice comment, or airing exit polls inside the prohibited window.
• Timecode and frame errors: adding frames as if 100 to a second instead of 25 at the PAL rate, and so mis-stating clip durations.
• In exams, confusing the regulators — Prasar Bharati Act for public broadcasting, Cable TV Act and MIB guidelines for private channels, NBDSA for self-regulation, TRAI for carriage and tariff, IT Rules 2021 for digital.

Related topics

News writing and reporting · Editing and headlines · Media ethics and laws in India · Fact-checking and verification · Video production and editing · Advertising and media planning