7: Writing for Audiovisual Media

The media formerly known as “broadcast”

For our purposes as media writers, the “audio” comes first in “audiovisual media” because most often audio carries the narrative. If you think about your favorite film or TV series, it is usually the combination of dialog, narration, ambient sound — i.e. "natural sound," music, and sound effects that delivers the information that moves the plot. If you need an example, turn on your favorite film, mute the sound and turn off captions. Depending on the movie, the images will likely convey most of the plot in broad strokes, but as a viewer you will probably be left wondering often about characters' motivations, about what they plan to do next, and about whether a scene is meant to be intense, thrilling, lighthearted, calm, etc. Audiovisual storytelling is built on a foundation of sound.

This is true across all sorts of media dissemination platforms. When we listen to podcasts, we relate to the hosts’ voices. When we watch television news live or catch video news clips on social media, natural sound — ambient sound recorded at the scene of events — draws us into the story.

Television news stations request 9-1-1 audio from newsworthy events, and sound effects specialists go to great lengths to create the sounds of storms and sandworms for the same reason: Great sound design makes fictional things seem real and makes factual events seem hyper real. Our secondhand experience of events via audiovisual news and social media is often more clear than if we had been there ourselves because superfluous sounds containing unnecessary information have been edited out.

This chapter addresses writing for audiovisual media including radio, television, and podcasting. Writing for social media and tips for writing screenplays are handled elsewhere in this text. Throughout this chapter, readers should think about the power of audio, the driver of audiovisual narratives.

The power of the radio wave

Writing for audiovisual media means writing scripts. Students may be more familiar with dramatic scripts than nonfiction ones, but the term is used across the media industry.

The root technology that established many of the audiovisual writing norms and conventions still in use today is radio. The use of radio waves to convey information laid the foundation for broadcast media and for reaching mass audiences as we conceive of them today. While newspapers were the first widely available, affordable, daily mass media product, broadcast radio was the first technology to reach mass audiences with free content in their homes with the power of the human voice and music.

Radio receivers were often offered at discounted prices in the early days of radio adoption in the United States because producers saw the opportunity to create a marketplace out of thin air, and governments recognized that ideologies could be reinforced efficiently using broadcast media.¹

The combination of the draw of entertainment and news, the ready-made revenue streams of advertising-sponsored programming, and the potential for social influence made radio a force to be reckoned with in the 20th century. Primarily because people of every generation in the U.S. still listen to radio in their cars, it still has the most reach of any mass medium, according to Statista.

You will find more infographics at Statista.

Radio has the unique ability to transcend physical boundaries to connect people across vast distances. The telegraph may have collapsed space and time in terms of the transmission of text-based messages, but radio broadcasters proved they could transmit the human voice, music, and dramatic presentations almost instantaneously to waiting audiences. An added benefit was that radio receivers, what we commonly refer to as simply “radios,” are easy for consumers of all ages and levels of education to use. Broadcast media serve everyone from the highly educated to those who are not able to read.²

Radio and other audio-based media also have an emotional component. The intimacy of the spoken word delivered over radio waves helps shape public opinion and creates a sense of unity and, potentially, trust. When you learn to write scripts for audiovisual media, you learn how to tap into this power.

Television

It is appropriate to think of television as the visual extension of radio, although the term "television" does not mean merging sound and images. It means something closer to "seeing from far away." Being able to extend human vision across space and time was considered nearly magical when television was invented, but, as has already been suggested, the real power of broadcast media came from the merger of sound, images, and rapid dissemination.

The marriage of rich, colorful images to narratives delivered through sound on a platform that has, at times, been free, or at least affordable to mass audiences, is what has made television so popular. Globally, television is a ubiquitous source of information and entertainment. Its content is a touchstone of cultural representation.³ Television broadcasts have the power to shape public opinion, reflect and reinforce popular culture, deliver education and entertainment, and bring about social change.⁴ Great television scripts deliver powerful narratives via audio and flesh out those stories into fully immersive content with visual cues.

In this chapter, you will learn both single-column radio scripting techniques that apply to all kinds of audio media, as well as two-column TV scripting techniques where the narrative audio is indicated on the right and video, graphics, and other visual cues are indicated on the left. Great scripts are blueprints for towering media productions that have the potential to move mass audiences.

1. Barnouw, Erik. Tube of plenty: The evolution of American television. Oxford University Press, 1990.

2. Ibid.

3. Fiske, John. Television culture. Routledge, 2010.

4. Carson, Clayborne, et al., eds. The eyes on the prize civil rights reader: Documents, speeches, and firsthand accounts from the Black freedom struggle. Penguin, 1991.