Writing for Television

Writing for radio and television is called broadcast writing. Writing style of both these mediums is similar to a great extent. But television is an audio visual media and a television script should give equal importance for sound and visual. The visual element in television script is the major difference from a radio script. Communication scholar Laurie Lattimore said that, the broadcast copy is written to be read out loud by a news reader rather than to be silently by a newspaper reader. 

Television writing requires special set of skills like accuracy, clarity and visual sense in writing. Every element in a television script should complement the video and audio that accompanies the story. Broadcasting script, whether it is television or radio, differs from a news report for print. Television script should be read loud before finalising. This will help to find whether the story is good for broadcasting. Basic ingredients of a television script are fact and context. It should be readable, understandable and conversational.

Television writing should be precise and structured. The content written for print is only for the purpose of reading. But a television script is written for the eyes and ears, and it also has a live nature. So it is conversational in nature. Television news stories give importance for live and up to date information. It is a medium of immediacy. It should fit in a certain time period and cannot vary more than a few seconds. Television script writers are responsible for researching the story, developing the narrative and writing the screenplay to present it in the required format. Television writers have great influence over the creative and technical impact of the program.