When an anchor interviews the station’s field reporter on the scene, does the reporter know what questions they’re going to be asked? They always seem to be well prepared. I’ve never seen an interaction like:
>Anchor: How many people were in the building when it caught fire?
>
>Reporter: Uhh, I dunno, I didn’t ask…
There must be some mutual prep ahead of time, but when is it done? And how does the anchor know what they want to know, until the reporter has covered the preliminaries? Is the field reporter in contact with a producer, who then writes questions for the anchor to ask while the anchor is live on other stories, and the anchor gets no say?
In: Other
Yes, it’s all scripted. The field reporters send in a list of questions to the anchor that they want to be asked.
Every once in a while, when there really is a breaking story, you’ll get a genuine back-and-forth. The main clue there is usually that the reporter says “we don’t know” a lot, or repeats meaningless statements without providing any new information.
When the reporter is live during a regularly scheduled news broadcast, that’s sometimes referred to as a “gratuitous live shot”. There’s absolutely no reason for the reporter to be live in the field, it just makes for more dramatic TV. The entire exchange has been scripted.
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