What We Can Learn From "The King's Speech"

With all of the Oscar buzz about "The King's Speech," I thought I take advantage of this teaching moment to make a few important points about talent coaching for on-air news anchors and reporters, and for anyone who needs to appear in front of a camera for online video.

First, there are a lot of bad talent coaches out there. At the beginning of the movie, Prince Albert is asked to put glass marbles in his mouth by a speech therapist who fails to get results with a "one-size-fits-all" coaching exercise. Geoffrey Rush's character, Lionel Logue, takes the time to address the specific, individual issues that are holding back his royal client's communication skills.

Another disaster occurs when the prince's father, King George, tries to improve the stammering son's performance by standing over him and commanding, "Relax!" It doesn't help your performance when the person who signs your paycheck demands that you "be conversational" without any further guidance.

Of course, stammering is a serious impediment that may require treatment by an expert in speech therapy. Most people who advance to the level of professional news anchoring and reporting don't stammer. But they often need the help of a talent coach to eliminate other types of static that is interfering with their performance. Some of our most celebrated broadcasters, such as NBC's Tom Brokaw and ABC's Barbara Walters, have noticeable speech defects. Yet, they are effective communicators. On the other hand, it's possible to have perfect diction and fail to connect with the audience.

What works? Logue insists on "trust and total equality, here in the safety of my consultation room." Talent coaching takes place in a safety zone where clients can experiment with changes in their performance that they could never risk on a live program. No, I don't ask my clients to swear at the top of their lungs, but we do breathing exercises, arm flapping and a few other things to break down the phony anchor facade and encourage an authentic performance. What happens in coaching stays in coaching. Or, as Logue puts it, "with complete privacy."

In addition to teaching skills, it's also important for the talent coach to have significant experience in front of the camera. As a Shakespearean actor, Logue knew how to project the image of a king. He understood how to size up a grand stage and prepare his client to take commeand. But, at the moment when the new king faced the challenge of preparing his country for World War II, Logue's advice was simple: "Say it to me as a friend."

Just as the stammering monarch in the movie had to deal with the new technology of radio, those of us who make our living in journalism and public relations must learn to use multimedia to reach our intended audience. Whether you are a veteran or a beginner, it helps to have a talent coach to bring out your true multimedia voice.

Get started on your coaching package at http://terryanzur.com/.

A version of this post has also appeared on a highly recommended web site for news professionals: http://the247newsroom.com/.

Bye-Bye to the TV News Tie

For the past year or so, I've been warning my male anchor clients to get ready to lose the tie. Now, it has finally happened. The New York Times reports that KNBC news anchor David Ushery is going tie-less on his weekend broadcast as a way of attracting viewers who have drifted away to other media. The Times goes on about how this transition will be difficult for men of a certain generation. Nonsense. Casual attire now is the prevailing custom in most US businesses and TV news was slow to change, at least on the male side. It's time.Here in Los Angeles, it's not unusual to see female news readers in attire that looks more like lingerie. Even Megyn Kelly, the "it" gal of the moment on the Fox News Channel, regularly bares her arms and a lot more. Even in the heartland or the deep south, figure-flattering knit tops have become a standard alternative to a business suit for female talent. However, the sleek, contemporary look for women appears completely mismatched when paired with a man in a suit that Don Draper might wear on Mad Men.

Then there's the temperature factor. When I was hosting on the network that eventually became MSNBC, our boss Roger Ailes, preferred a meat-locker temperature in the studio. He said the freezing air helped keep the guests from falling asleep under the toasty lights, it also kept Roger comfortable in his wool suit. (His interview program aired right after the show I did with Chris Matthews on America's Talking). Female hosts like me, who even had lights pointed at our exposed legs, just had to freeze and bear it. On KTLA, Hal Fishman kept the studio so cold that my predecessor, Jan Carl, had to keep a portable heater under the desk. During my tenure on KTLA News at Ten, I'd shiver through the show until I couldn't even feel my legs anymore, and then run to my car and turn the heater up. Allowing the men to lose the multi-layer business suit means that studios can be a more tolerable atmosphere for everyone.

So, guys, get ready to take the tie off. And get to the gym ASAP. Because soon you'll be losing the jacket, too. Put on a fitted polo shirt and let us see your guns. As we move into the delivery of news on mobile multimedia platforms, people want to see someone they'd meet at Starbucks for a coffee, not a guy in a throwback business suit announcing the headlines from the mountain top.

Judging from the picture at the top of this post, Mr. Ushery could still use some advice on appearance. The black-white contrast is a bit stark and not flattering to a person of color. The business suit may be about to go the way of the dinosaur, but there are still rules for what looks good on camera. You want to keep your credibility while becoming more casual, comfortable and connected to the viewrs.

To learn how to make your talent more effective when presenting the news in multimedia, please visit my web site, http://www.terryanzur.com/, register and schedule your coaching visit today!

Catching Some Rays

It's always a good day to go the ballpark, but even more special when you are there with a guy who writes baseball books. I'm in Florida to visit my co-author Tony Silvia and work on our book, "Power Performance: Storytelling for Multimedia Journalists."
He scored some sweet seats at Tropicana Field for the Rays and Texas Rangers. We enjoyed a great brunch in the Whitney Bank Club, and an awesome vantage point on the first base line. We also paid a visit to the broadcast booth to visit play-by-play man Dewayne Staats. Tony's most recent book is "Fathers and Sons in Baseball Broadcasting," and we had a chance to meet one of the people he has profiled, Todd Kalas, son of the late of the late Philadelphia Phillies broadcaster Harry Kalas.You can check out Tony's book at this link: http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-3815-0Thinking back to some fun times with my dad, watching the Dodgers or the minor league Quakes, I can't thank Tony enough for sharing his "inside baseball" world with me. I also was able to meet several of his colleagues from the University of South Florida at a party for new grad students. Nice people, great fun, but back to work tomorrow!

Old Reporter, New Multimedia Tricks

I've been teaching students to research, report, shoot and edit their own video stories since 1991, but I've always had a technical assistant to teach the part about operating the camera and editing equipment. Now I'm ready to take on the world as a one-woman band. The Poynter Institute's hands-on workshop at RTNDA in Las Vegas was intended to teach old dogs, like me, a few new media tricks. However, I was the only seasoned reporter in attendance. The rest of the participants were fresh-faced college students, eager to show off the skills they had already learned! All of the participants were female, until three journalists from Ghana joined the group and two of them were men.

My assignment was to put together a story on RTNDA efforts to push for the release of journalist Roxana Saberi, wrongly condemned by an Iranian court to 8 years in prison on espionage charges, with no public trial. More on that in another post.

I felt confident of my ability to seek out interesting interviews and video, but the problem was HOW to do it. I fumbled with the multiple cables and the unwieldy tripod, accidently kept hitting the Canon camera's on-off button, and had trouble ingesting my footage into the Final Cut Pro editing system because of video frame drops. It's probably unrealistic to expect even the most technical geek to learn an editing program in an hour or so, but I got it almost all done by the time I had to leave the session to catch my plance home. Many thanks to my longtime colleague, CBS photog Les Rose, and new friend Lynn French from KPNX for guiding me through it.

With a little more practice, I'm confident I'd become an expert. I think back to my early days on the streets with an ENG crew of up to four people: a camera man, audio box operator, truck operator and me as the reporter and mother hen. I used to long for my newspaper reporting days of covering a story with just a pen and a notebook. Now, armed with some new skills, I'm even more prepared to coach my students and clients to take on the multimedia world!