Emily Eddington

Not a day goes by that someone doesn’t leave a comment on one of my YouTube videos talking about my “news voice”. Sometimes they say “I love your voice, you sound like you should be on the news!” Other times it’s, “Your voice is annoying, when are you going to toss to Bob in weather.”

I don’t think I have a lot of haters on my voice, but there are a fair amount of comments simply noting that I sound like someone on the radio or on TV. Still, there are some who are kind of mean, and seem to think that my voice is something I can just turn on and off. To put it simply, I can’t.

I think voices are part nature, part nurture. We’re all born with certain voices, and your geographic location, or just the type of work you do might change them. When I talk, I enunciate. I didn’t emerge from the womb enunciating things perfectly (there’s an ongoing joke that as a small child in church, I noticed a flag, pointed to it and yelled F***!!! Clearly I haven’t always known how to enunciate! But back to my point….) Over the years, whether it was public speaking classes or just anchoring the news, my voice has matured and been trained to be what it is today.

Can you imagine how unnatural it would be for me to get up on the news desk every morning, and just for that hour and a half, talk in a clear and even tone? And then go back to some sort of valley-girl speak afterward? It just doesn’t happen. I don’t have an especially high-pitched voice, and I talk clearly. I don’t think I have a stereotypical news voice (one who speaks in a very commanding tone with the same repetitive patterns… “and THEN the car CRASHED into the TREE.”) However I do understand that my voice probably comes across much differently than what you hear in your average YouTube makeup video.

My point is this- a bodybuilder doesn’t come home and magically remove his muscles after a day of working out. I don’t change my voice either. It’s part of who I am, and, call me crazy, but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with speaking in clear, complete sentences with proper grammar and not a lot of BS words thrown in. It’s who I am, and I think it might just make my videos better.

I don’t have tons of critics on my voice, but even a few here and there in the YouTube world make me want to give this kind of a response and explanation. So… there you go! “This is Emily Eddingon, signing off. Hope you have a great day and join me again soon for more blogs on Tumblr.” (said in classic news anchor tones :)

Have you ever had a horrible dream where you were totally unprepared for whatever event you had to attend? Like there was some huge project you were part of and you completely forgot about it? Or you showed up late to school or work on a very important day? Usually we only have to experience these scenarios in our dreams. I know I have!

Now from dreamland to news-land. Today we were getting ready for one of our “cut-ins”… it’s a brief local news update that airs live during Good Morning America (we’re an ABC affiliate). Associate Producer Josue and I were running a little behind as we made our way to the set. For these brief, minute-long news updates, we usually have only a few quick stories. We read them from the teleprompter, and if the teleprompter would ever stop working- we have paper scripts as a back-up.

With about 30 seconds until we went on air, I didn’t have prompter and I didn’t have scripts (they had been on the desk previously, but I don’t know what happened to them). Whatever the case, it was getting down to the wire. Our weather guy, who I toss to after news, was getting kind of antsy- “What would you do if you didn’t have prompter or scripts?!?!”

An odd calm came over me. I just thought, well, I’ll talk about whatever I want! I’ll talk about what’s coming up on tomorrow’s show. I’ll talk about our cool morning show blog. I’ll ask people to Facebook me their story ideas! All I’d need to fill was a minute! I fill 10 minutes no problem on my YouTube channel… never with any sort of script.

You see, after doing more than 530 ad-libbed videos on YouTube, I have become really comfortable just TALKING. And I secretly crave the moments when I don’t have to follow a script that’s rolling through a teleprompter that I control with an accelerator-type pedal. I enjoy that time that I don’t have to TRY to sound conversational while reading news… but rather, BEING conversational as I just talk! I think my co-anchor Kevin sort of craves the “fly by the seat of your pants” talk-show-type morning show as well. And fortunately, we get to do our fair share of that during our 90 minute show.

There was a time when a totally unscripted moment on the news was the scariest thing to me. I remember when I started out anchoring, doing the Saturday night shows that were only a half hour long. There wasn’t a lot of viewership, and I only had small windows of time following sports and weather that I didn’t have a script and had to chat with the other anchors. I worried about those moments. What would I say? What if it came out wrong? I only anchor once a week— it’ll be another week before I can redeem myself!! ahhh!!!

Well this morning, super Associate Producer Josue got the prompter up with seconds to spare. And the lovely Evie ran a set of scripts up to me right before we went on. I wasn’t freaked out at all! There was no post-cut-in tantrum- “Where were my scripts!?!?!” And following the cut-in, I asked myself- why? Where was the turning point? I think spending several years doing off-the-cuff YouTube videos (almost daily practice just ad-libbing), and my great co-anchor Kevin have put me at ease… teaching me that I can just say what I want and if it’s not perfect, it’s not the end of the world. In fact, we might all just get a big laugh out of it! The experts say public speaking is still the number one fear in America. I want to thank my co-workers, and thanks to my first tiny cheap camera I used to make YouTube videos in the spare room of our apartment for helping me get over it. No more bad dreams!

Have a wonderful day!

Emily

Greetings everyone! I join you fresh off of a phone call from someone watching our newscast this morning. If I sound like I’m on my soapbox during this post, I guess it’s because… well… I am.

Today our final video was of the Panamanian soccer player who kicked an owl that had gotten onto the field (the owl was the other team’s mascot). In the block of news prior to that story, I teased it… saying…

“Find out what happened to an owl that wandered onto a soccer field of all places. Our video of the day is coming up.”

On a daily basis our “Video of the Day” is usually something shocking caught on tape. Sometimes it’s happy, sometimes it’s not. The viewer who called said I had a “big grin” on my face as I read that tease. I watch the video again, and I was not smiling while reading the tease, although after the tease, I did have a somewhat pleasant look on my face as I started typing on my nearby laptop. I wouldn’t even call it a smile… just a standard look that’s a step up from a blank stare.

If there was any question about my reaction to the story, you could see just a couple of minutes later during the actual story that I was in no way happy about this owl getting kicked. I think it’s awful! I love owls!

Sidebar: Proof that I love owls… (trying to lighten things up)

• In grade school, when told to craft a woodland creature, I chose the owl.
• I own two necklaces with owl pendants.
• I have watched numerous YouTube videos that involve owls.

I explained to the self-proclaimed “animal lover” on the phone that I am also an animal lover. Still, they were clearly upset with what they feel was an inappropriate facial expression. I wasn’t going to convince them otherwise, so I just apologized and thanked them for watching.

I’ll be the first to admit, I make mistakes during our news. I’ll stumble, sometimes forget what I was going to say, or be caught off guard when the camera comes back on me. I’m a human being, and 90 minutes of live TV will not be 100% perfect! I also know that my appearance is far from perfect… having been compared to Morticia Addams of The Addams Family in a recent email. However, I do feel that I am very consistent when it comes to having the appropriate reaction. I feel like I, as a human being, give a real, honest reaction to the stories I read.  

This particular complaint with the owl story wasn’t some major obvious err in judgement on my part. At that point, couldn’t the viewer give me some credit? They’d been watching all morning and are regular viewers…. couldn’t they give me the benefit of whatever doubt was on their minds? Day in and day out I like to think I’ve given them a reason to believe that I am not a bitter, insensitive person. Couldn’t they think, well- I’m sure she has nothing against owls. Let’s move on with our day.

So what’s the takeaway from this whole experience? Give people some credit. We live in a world of critics where it seems people are always wanting to jump on you for something or catch you doing something wrong. If it’s seriously WRONG, so be it! But is there a real need to nitpick? Let’s try to catch people doing something right. Give some pats on the back. Try to give a HOOT about some of the bigger problems in the world… maybe spend time being mad at the dude that actually kicked the owl?!

Thanks for reading & have a great day!

On our morning newscast, we do live interviews on a daily basis- sometimes more than one. They usually last around 3.5 minutes… usually no more than 4 minutes. We have a wide variety of guests- candidates for political office, doctors, organizers of a particular event, performers, cooking experts, young people, old people, people who’ve done numerous interviews… and those who have never done an interview before. It’s the interviewee’s interviewing experience, or lack of experience, that seems to make all the difference in what I’m about to explain.

A live interview is definitely the most revealing format, for both the interviewer and the interviewee. There’s no editing out the sound-bytes that don’t make sense, no chopping up the answers to make it more concise. You get what you get, and the veiwers watch it as it happens. It’s very easy for those watching at home to judge the interviewer’s reaction.

The following are response’s I’ve gotten to recent live interviews I’ve done. They either come from viewers (we have a live chat during the show, so we tend to get instant feedback), my producer (the person talks to me through an earpiece during the interview), or other co-workers.

• Cut him (or her) off!!
• Why didn’t you slap that guy?
• You should have interrupted
• How did you contain yourself?
• You are too polite

The next time you are thinking these things as you watch a live interview on TV where the subject either won’t talk, can’t stop talking, or is rude… put yourself in the interviewer’s shoes. Would you REALLY just slap somebody? How easy is it to tactfully cut someone off mid-sentence? Are you comfortable with being an ass to someone on live TV?

The bottom line is this— the news anchor doesn’t get to just do an interview, and then disappear into thin air. They have to maintain a sense of tact, and continue to be a person that viewers want to watch on a daily basis. In the past month, I’ve had to cut off two people mid-sentence. I try not to do it, but we were going to go to break and it had to end. I tried to be apologetic, but what I and all the other viewers have to realize, is that we’re not interviewing objects. These are real human beings with feelings, nerves, and in many cases- A LACK OF EXPERIENCE BEING INTERVIEWED.

It’s not a bad thing! Some people are naturals. Sometimes just watching the news will give you a feel for the time frame and what to do… but if you ever find yourself as the subject of a live interivew, here are my tips to make it painless for you— and the anchor.

• Answer the questions. Listen to what you’ve been asked and only answer that. Understand that the anchor has a better idea of the time frame they’re working with than you do, and they probably have a plan for the questions they want you to answer.
• If you give a YES or NO answer, elaborate on it. But don’t go longer than about a minute. For example, on our morning show, a minute is a third of the interview.
• If you realize the interviewer hasn’t had the chance to ask a second question, let them! It’s easy for some people to get on a roll and just keep talking. Viewers realize it’s suppose to be an interview, and if the anchor doesn’t get the chance to ask a question, viewers pick up on that.
• Look the interviewer in the eye. If you’re in a studio setting, there may be a lot going on behind the scenes… lights, cameras, crew members, etc. Stay focused on the person asking the question and don’t let your eyes wander. You’ll be easier to watch on TV.

That pretty much sums it up! Just thought it might help to have some insight into what the anchor and the interviewee go through on live TV. Have a great day & thanks for reading!

Emily