ABSTRACT
A survey of almost one hundred radio and television editors in Britain by the Broadcast Journalism Training Council showed that the ability to write good English in the form of crisp, stylish scripts was the quality most sought after in the hopeful broadcast journalist. That may seem obvious, but there had been an impression in the late 1990s that good writing was not always appreciated. It turned out that this was not the case at all. Time and the proliferation of broadcasting services, it seems, have not changed the skills that matter. Good scripting and lots of ideas are what matter. The first thing to be said to the apprehensive newcomer about writing for television news is there are any number of broad guidelines but few hard and fast rules. This makes sound common sense in a medium where so much depends on instant reaction in the field or in the newsroom, up to and often including the time of programme transmission.
