The first thing that he said that caught my eye was how for televisions the image is more important than the dialogue. This struck me at first. Why on earth its not the other way around? You would think that what you say would hit harder than what you see. But as you can see through this commercial the image is really what hits hard with people.
Funnily enough though this commercial would not get a passing grade in this book. He discusses a list of guidlines that commercials should follow. The last of his guidelines was that if you fall in love with a commercial for its brilliance, then remove the product from the commercial and can still love it, then it hasn't done its job. Many commercials forget this and just go out of their way to razzle dazzle you. Car commercials especially suffer from this.
One thing that all people must always consider while on TV or writing for it is the language. Language on TV must be simple. People dont like fancy and high details, they prefer to have it short and sweet. Big words also cause people to feel dumb, and the last thing you want to do is insult your audience.
Although the goal for writing on TV is to be simple so that people understand, but vagueness should be avoided. Vagueness can cause your viewers to become confused and me lead them away. Of course vagueness can be used to peoples advantage. Commercials are especially good at this, just look at the Veriszon Wireless commercials. They have started the new new map that shows them with 5x more 3G coverage than AT&T. The information they show is incredibly misleading and makes them look much better than their opponents.
Of course honesty and truth is what people should be aiming for when they are on TV. But this doesn't always happen. Most information that is given out today is stated with a view behind it. He mentions objectivity and states that the reporter should aim for fairness and honesty. But stations no longer do this and ussuzlly impose their views on their audience *cough cough* Fox News.
One of the big things that we don't realize about TV is the amount of preparation that is put into it. Interviews are one of the things that takes the most preparation, or at least a good one will. Even though it may seem like a spur of the moment thing, every single question and response has to be ready for TV. One of the best interviewers out there right now is Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report.
Everything that is shown on TV must be scripted and thought out. From What is shown to what we hear, everything must be planned. It's one of the things we take most for granted about TV is the fact that it is well planned out. The camera movements must be planned even the types of microphones they wish to use must be planned so that you can get the sound that you desire.
The book also covers how one promotes new shows and how to pitch them to a company. Pitches must be fast and sweet, and must make the people listening interested and willing to give your program a go on their network. What people tend to forget is that you only have a few minutes to convince them that they will want your show and that is not a lot of time to do so.
He also go into discusiion of kids TV shows. He states that these have to be carefully constructed so to not only teach kids, but also make it so they can understand them. In my opinion though todays kids shows aren't as good as they used to be. They seem to be targeted towards older audiences and aren't the same kid friendly things that I grew up with. Just take a look at this excerpt from Cartoon Networks show The Marvelous Misadventurous of FlapJack.
This book even covers the legal issues that come with TV. Despite what you may think, Tv isn't as protected under the first ammendmant is written documentation. Shows must stay within public interest, conveience, and necessity. This surprised even me that a TV show may not actually be protected by the first ammendmant.
This book is a must read, should you have the free time to do so. There is so much going on behind the scenes than we realise.
