Text II. The Anchor Ingredient.

Vocabulary.

1. anchorperson 2. identify with smth 3. promote 4. flourishes 5. befit smth 6. celebrity 7. get recognition 8. empathy 9. stand out 10. commodity 11. forgiving 12. frailty 13. flub 14. clarity

телеведущий; присоединиться к чьему-либо (мнению); содействовать; шумиха; подходить к кому-либо; знаменитость; получить признание; сопереживание, сочувствие; выделяться; товар, предмет потребления снисходительный; недостаток, слабость; промах, ошибка, ляп; ясность;

15. precision 16. detachment 17. noncommittal 18. impartial 19. nonpartisan 20. mannerism 21. facial expression 22. earn 23. wave at smb. 24. likely 25. dimension 26. in part 27. loyalty

точность; беспристрастность, независимость (суждений); уклончивый, ни к чему не обязывающий; непредвзятый, справедливый; непредубеждённый; манера поведения; выражение лица; зарабатывать; махать кому-либо; вероятнее всего; масштаб, размер; частично; верность.

I. Pre-read task.

Before you read the text, decide what information you would like to find out about the work of anchor people. Make up five questions about it.

II. Read and translate the text.

The audience is watching anchorpersons and reporters tell the news. Although anchorpersons are not supposed to become emotionally involved in the news they are telling the audience about, they are human. Occasionally they break out of their shells and indicate by some mannerism, facial expression, or remark, what they think about what they have just watched with the audience. Audiences identify with that.

The “personal” dimension is worth closer examination because it is an integral part of the television news communication process.

Anchors earn huge salaries and are promoted with flourishes befitting heads of state. They are true national or local celebrities. TV reporters also get recognition, more recognition than their print colleagues. People wave at them and call them by their first names as they walk down the street. Tourists are as likely to report they saw a television or cable network news correspondent getting out of a cab in New York or Washington as they are to talk about any other history event or place they saw on their trip. Viewers develop a personal relationship – an empathy – with the anchors and reporters who are there in their living rooms every day.

Hundreds of research studies have tried to define the dimensions of this relationship and just how it works. Consultants who advise TV stations on how to increase the size of the news audience have earned large sums of money for their work in part because they have concentrated their research on the viewer-anchor relationship. In general a few things stand out:

1. The audience and the anchorperson are involved in an empathic relationship – the audience has personal feelings about the anchor.

2. The audience respects anchors because they deliver an important commodity – the news.

3. The audience imagines personal characteristics about individual anchors: it looks at them closely and reacts to any change in their appearance, dress, or on-air-conduct.

4. The audience is forgiving about personal frailties – an occasional flub or a bad performance.

5. The audience is not very forgiving about professional failures – repeated mistakes, repeated poor performance, lack of clarity or precision.

6. The audience feels that it gets the news from people it likes more than it likes getting the news from people it dislikes.

7. The audience feels that it gets the news more clearly from anchorpersons it likes.

8. When things go wrong, the audience is often more likely to blame the news organization the anchor works for than to blame an anchor it likes.

9. The audience develops a very strong loyalty and viewing habit because of the continued presence of a likable anchor.

Network anchors normally assume a detachment from the news accounts they are presenting or introducing. People use different terms to indicate this phenomenon, terms such as noncommittal, detached, neutral, impartial, non-partisan, objective, and the like.