I must mention another important improvement in the news programs this week. TVM News has a graphic open that includes boxes for video of the top headline stories, but when the staff doesn’t have video they just put a couple of lines of text in the box. It looks bizarre. So today we instituted a new rule that if there is no video we drop the headlines, roll the open and go straight to the anchor.
The technical director, Mustafa came up with a better way to roll the headlines so it moves at a faster pace. Now we have to make some other small fixes, like taking the Charlie Chaplin comedy music out from under the roundups of regional and atoll news. Bob also supervised the studio camera operator in a better way to frame the anchor shot so that the anchors are now shot more tightly and looking directly into the camera. Each of these little changes makes a difference.
More new rules:
No reporter packages over two minutes.
No soundbites over :30 seconds.
No repeating shots in a package.
No jump cuts.
Start with best video first.
Rameez put out a memo to the staff to make these changes official. But it can be hard to get the word out to the young atoll reporters toiling as one-person bands in the far-flung atolls.