How to Be a Good Sports News Anchor

Video Transcript

"I'm Jamal Spencer for Expert Village here at ABC 3 here in Lansing, and we're going to talk about how to be a successful sports broadcaster. This clip is about how to anchor. You see it on T.V. It looks a lot easier than it is, trust me. When the camera rolls and the lights hit you in the face and the guy goes "There's your cue," you might tense up a little bit. Your mouth gets a little dry, you get a little nervous. That's a natural reaction. But the thing is to be yourself. A lot of times people want to come up with crazy catch-phrases or people want to be fake. It's very easy to be fake on camera, but the audience can tell you're being fake. You want to be yourself. You want to be natural, you want to be poised, you want to be relaxed. Before you go on you want to go over your script so you're prepared. That's the most important thing to being a successful anchor is being prepared. When you go on camera and you're about to talk about something that you've never seen or you've never read, it's going to sound like you've never seen it or never read it before. So the more prepared you are as an anchor, the better your performance will be. You sit back, you relax. You talk to your co-anchor if you have one. You even talk to the audience. "Oh, that was a great dunk, I know you guys love it at home," so, so and so. You have to make them feel like it's just a conversation between you and them, and you're sitting on the couch walking a basketball game or a football game or a hockey game or rugby, or whatever you like to anchor. So when you're an anchor, the most important thing is to be poised, be relaxed, be yourself, speak slowly. You don't want to rush. You don't want to fly through the script. You want to take your time, pronounce your words clearly and have fun. Like I said, this is a job that people would do for free. Some of us do it for free. So trust me, this is a job that anyone will enjoy. Just enjoy it, have fun with it. Be yourself, relax. Don't worry about trying to be entertaining or crazy energetic, or like I said, come up with a bunch of stupid catch-phrases. Have fun, be yourself. Give the people the sports that they want to see and they will enjoy it too. So that's how you be a successful anchor."