A news programme demands more detailed planning than that of a radio show due to the nature of its content. As the news team have to plan around the emerging stories of the day, the planning requirements can change at very little notice. The BBC News at 6 is just one of the many live news broadcasts which will have to tackle the very tight pre – production schedule in order to bring the latest news to the viewers.
A news broadcast will need many sources of information and staff on site for every story to get the best facts and figures they can. It will be up to these sources to make sure the information gets to the producers before the live broadcast so they have time to plan where to place the story in the programme.
Interviews would also need to be planned in advance so that the broadcast wouldn’t run over and miss out any important news stories. The interviews may be filmed in advance if the interviewee cannot make the programme.
Another important pre-production element of the news, is the graphics which are used in the broadcast. These are made to fit the stories and are planned in advance of the show. To make these graphics, the graphic designer would need to know the information on each news story and would therefore need the sources to hand in their information in the pre-production stages.
One very important element of the news is the timing of each story. As a news broadcast typically only lasts for half an hour, the production team need to make sure that each news article has enough time to explain the emerging story but leave the other articles with a decent amount of time also. If the production team don’t keep to a specific time schedule, many news stories would over run and the others would have very little time or no time at all to air.
As a news programme has live news stories, the production team have a lot less time to plan and do any pre-production than a pre recorded programme. The stories received on the day of broadcast sometimes come in as short as an hour before airing. This means that the production team will need to plan for these circumstances and if they occur, they will need to fit them in, in a very short space of time which is something a pre recorded show would have a lot more time to do. This may also mean that they have no footage to accompany the article and would therefore need to create a graphics screen instead. This would help the viewer understand the story more without any footage as on the graphic screen would be key facts and figure, usually bullet pointed for ease and also important quotes would be featured. The graphic screen will usually have a striking background colour to entice the viewer to read what ever is on show.
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