The news bulletin is one of the key services a radio station provides. It gives listeners a regular diet of information they must have, and it reinforces the station’s credibility as a reliable source of relevant news. In addition to the most important stories your audience wants you should also run a range of other items, such as weather forecasts and traffic updates.
Every bulletin has to make tough choices about what it includes. There are only about three minutes of material in a bulletin and there isn’t room for everything that could be included. The important criteria for judging what is suitable are: 1. How recent it is. This is a crucial point: the more recent a story is the more likely it is to have relevance to your audience.
If a story is old and not of interest it should not be included. It is very difficult to keep listeners interested in the same story over and over. A good strategy is to change the pace by re-ordering stories within a bulletin. For example, if you start with three economic stories (however important) and the listener begins to lose interest try moving a dramatic story such as a street fight up to third place, which will inject some pace into your bulletin.
It is a good idea to write headlines for the stories in a bulletin, especially the major ones. This helps the listener to judge how long each item is and it also gives a sense of what kind of stories they can expect in the bulletin. It is usual to introduce a special theme to the bulletin and short music inserts may also be used in the bulletin, often to separate different stories or to provide a break between different sections.