BBC Radio Leeds did a callout on their Sport Twitter page for any budding sports reporters to attend a virtual workshop to learn some tips, and our accessibility correspondent Dan was one of the lucky ones chosen, and here’s what he learnt:
BBC Radio Leeds sports reporting tips with Adam Pope and James Deighton
We all logged in at 6:45pm, we all had a chat, then they gave tips on reporting e.g start with score, don’t overdo detail, end with score, YOUR Opinion of the game and everything must be from perspective of Our team,
OUR Team
So this means that you need to react to things happening for example if you’re working for BBC Radio Leeds and its Wakefield v Hull for example, if Wakefield score you need to be happy and energetic with commentary, if Hull score you need to be despondent and if it’s 2 West Yorkshire teams playing each other for example Featherstone v Halifax then you’d probably react the same kind of way as you can’t really be biased when its 2 teams from same county.
They then gave us tips on
Knowing the audience
So this means that you need to give them information, and don’t assume they’ve been there for the whole commentary, as they may not have been , then they moved onto :
Commentating tips, Context of commentary
So examples of this are: Become familiar with all areas of the pitch, use tone and tempo to describe flow of play, use rise and fall in delivery for easy listening, avoid (weird) words and phrases or repetition,
Don’t use jargon as people may not understand you and just be yourself
Avoid Alan Partridge moments which are saying thing he may say
Things to Avoid,
Which are: No player nicknames, Don’t say “we†in relation to a team, cut down on the clichés, don’t mention match summariser in commentary, as they can take over if you are reading your notes for example.
They then gave us some advice on what it’s like working with a summariser, bias, post-match interview dos and don’t then they ended with trying to tell us not to try mispronounce players names.
They also said at the end that if anyone had any bits of commentary , they could send them over to them and they will give feedback to them.
By Dan Crossfield, check out Dan’s sports reports at https://danssportsblogweb.wordpress.com
