ANCHOR SPEAK EXPLAINED -- Ben Dobson

What on earth is "anchor speak, "happy talk," or "anchor banter?" In this media-saturated digital age, it's a reference to the conversations anchors have. Often, the talk is simply insincere emotion, or an attempt to care about a story with a tragic twist that just ran on the station. And these television personalities have happy talk with a lot of people. With one another. With the sportscaster. With reporters corresponding live in the newsroom, across the studio, or in a live remote across town or the nation. And especially with the weathercaster (we can't use the term "meteorologist" here since many stations prefer the cheap help of untrained, uncertified weather presenters). Any time a newscast is running light on content, it's ever so easy for a producer in the control room to whisper into the anchor's earpiece "you've got time to happy-talk." That sends the anchors into babble-overdrive. Some paraphrases I've heard over the years:

"Oh, those temperatures are going to help my garden so much!"

"Well, I know we're all Red Sox fans here, but you've got to feel for the Baltimore Orioles, right Bob?"

"You know, they should really make names of hurricanes easier to pronounce.. I'll be sitting here all night trying to get that one right..."

I know how it works, because I've sat in the anchor seat trying to pass the time with nothing to really talk about. The less time an anchor has to at least think about something intelligent to strike up conversation about, the more ridiculous the conversation is likely to become. And yes, the most skilled anchors can ad-lib without missing a beat, but they're in the same boat — trying to construct a normal conversation where one really isn't needed or wanted or in some cases, appropriate.

A columnist in Salon Magazine, Mark Hertsgaard, has labeled this phenomenon "fluff-in-mouth disease" and only begins to scratch the surface of the irony that he coined it in 1996 — almost five years before the current hysteria over the true cattle foot-and-mouth disease got anchor lips flapping all across the country.

Consider Fred Graham, author of a book titled "Happy Talk: Confessions of a TV Newsman." During an interview on C-Span's "Booknotes" program, he explained that when he entered the local television newscast as an anchorman, "I'd gone home to my hometown to try and be a local anchor. And I was immersed in happy talk up to my ears and drowning in it. And it seemed to me that it was an apt name for this book." And while it actually doesn't spend nearly as much time chastising the practice as will be done here, it's just another tiring example of how even the seasoned professionals find it foolish.

How do we compare internationally? Media critic Brett Dellinger lives in Finland and observed in his theoretical deconstruction of U.S. media that, "To Finns, it seems, American television news is read ‘with a gleeful smile and interspersed with laughter, punctuated by frowning--as if ... emotions were totally disconnected from the text. American audiences ... expect ‘happy talk' and banter during a news broadcast. Finns, on the other hand, associate such behavior with clowns...'" Something to think about, anyway. (http://cnncritical.tripod.com/c82.htm)

Then there's the image that should remind all of us of the two-headed monster on Sesame Street. Aren't anchor teams somewhat like that? Consider this observation from Cincinnati Enquirer columnist John Kieswetter, who observed "I don't need this two-headed monster alternating sentences. It's kind of creepy, two people completing each other's thoughts like a couple celebrating their silver anniversary."

In its condemnation of the state of local television news, the Project for Excellence in Journalism cited comments from focus groups. One Atlanta viewer is quoted in their study as having said "the happy talk between anchors ‘comical.... They discuss each others' ties.'" Or how about another focus group cited in TVSurvey.com's online edition in which one viewer, noted that "They're constantly saying each others' names. [And] this happy talk stuff? I wish they would drop that...Eliminate all the happy talk, the chitchat back and forth between each other, like we're all part of some happy little family."

But perhaps we are part of some little family. If this seems so inane, and case after case can be made to prove how ridiculous most anchor-banter is, why keep it? In his Cincinnati Enquirer column, Kieswetter cited the statistic that "TV news consultants say 85 percent of viewers prefer the Ken & Barbie approach." And I'm sure that they are on to something. When people turn on the television set, they literally invite these people into their homes. Having experienced the phenomenon of "face recognition" myself, I have had people strike up conversations about a story I did two years ago. For whatever reason, that's what they remembered most about me and felt like they knew me enough (and felt that the story was important enough to me) that I could just delve straight into a conversation with them. And if it's the happy-young couple anchoring the news alongside crazy-uncle Weatherman and everybody's favorite brother-in-law Sportscaster, then this existing format is likely to stick around for quite some time, for better or for worse. Time to start using our innate ability to use selective hearing.