The news bulletin is the most important element of any radio or television broadcast. It is the one thing which determines whether listeners will stay tuned for the rest of the show. It is therefore vital to keep it interesting and varied. It is also vital to get the pace of the stories right. Some stories need to be told quickly, others need more explanation and some are very serious whereas other stories may be more light-hearted.
The best way to judge what is newsworthy is by the criteria used for preparing the news on a newspaper page. The story must be new, unusual, interesting or significant and about people. This will help you decide what to lead with, and how to structure the bulletin. It will also help you to rank the stories in order of importance, so that the most important story is always given prominence.
It is common practice to start a bulletin with a headline list of the major stories which will feature in the bulletin. It is not necessary for a short bulletin but is useful for long bulletins to inform listeners of what they can expect from the news.
A great deal of the information in a bulletin will be recorded actuality – the sound of someone speaking, either an interview or speech, but sometimes simply a piece of recorded actuality such as a weather forecast or traffic update. This is usually a short segment of actuality, often no more than 20 seconds. If the actuality is in a language other than your own it should be overdubbed with a translation so that the listeners can hear the actuality in their own language while understanding what is being said.