0390 - Backtiming 1

Backtiming

Some stations or programmes hand back to a network (possibly automatically) at a certain time. As this has to be ‘to the second’ there may be silence (‘dead air’) if a presenter ends too early, or a ‘crash out’ if their output is taken over mid-way through a sentence or story. So, each script is timed at the average speaking rate of three words per second. With this figure, the presenter or producer calculates the time they need to have started reading the script by, if they are to finish on time. That calculation is the ‘backtime’.

Additionally, you can annotate your page with any markers that indicate by which time you need to have started a certain sentence or paragraph by (obviously this is tricky to do if reading from a screen…)

If a script is written in a ‘pyramid style’, (that is with the most important information first and least important last), then it may be that you can mark it to clearly show each sentence and ‘cut from the bottom’ – simply read until you reach a natural place to stop as your time runs out.

Over time you be able to fluently adlib around some content (such as the weather, which doesn’t need to be read word-for-word), so you can talk to time. Or sight reading and having an eye on the clock to see how long you have left in which to complete the read. Such presentation skills come with a lot of experience, and will require you to, if necessary, quicken or slow your pace as you go, to fill the time available.

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