When chitchat between TV news anchors is not so funny or cute

Mbira Rimi is irritated by the “juvenile, irritating and annoying” ways of NTV news anchors. “Can you please request nation TV evening news presenters to keep a professional distance from each other. Reading news is not a picnic outing.

"Your news presenters’ habit of touching each other during the news is juvenile, irritating and annoying,” he says.

I think what Mr. Rimi is referring to is not just the touching (which I’ve not witnessed). He’s referring to the small talk that news anchors engage in with each other and the offhand comments they make between stories.

The small talk is known in the industry as banter or happy talk. The banter can be commentary, jokes, or asking a question of another anchor. Example:

Dennis Okari on "NTV Tonight" of July 16, 2018: “Speaking of the visit of Barack Obama, Olive Burrows, you are the only Kenyan journalist who happens to have interviewed Barack Obama while he was still in office as president.”

POLISHED

Co-anchor Burrows: “Yes, yes, I was.”

Okari: “Many people say he it too polished, everything around him so choreographed and scripted. Is there anything that we don’t know that you know?”

Burrows: “I don’t know. He walked in and of course he had been briefed that we were going to interview him. So he walks in and says ‘Hi Olive’…Obama knows my name. But the question I get asked a lot is how did he smell?” Okari: “How did he smell?”

Burrows: “I don’t know. I can’t remember. Okay. This is what I can say: He doesn’t smell fetid and was not wearing pungent cologne. May be we can leave it at that.”

Okari: “But still smells.” The anchors break into laughter.

FORMAL

Traditionally, television news in Kenya has been formal and serious, no banter. Larry Madowo, former NTV anchor, claims credit for himself and his colleagues -- Smriti Vidyarthi and Wallace Kantai -- for introducing chitchat in NTV news.

“For too long in Kenya, anchors have been like robots that seemed perfect,” he says in “Kenyan anchors’ long walk to the light, short and sexy” by Carlos Mureithi, Sunday Nation, August 11, 2013.

However, many viewers, like Mr Rimi, believe news should be treated with the seriousness it deserves.

On the other hand, there are those who love banter and think it acts as a relief from serious news, injecting life into a serious or boring news bulletins.

UNPROFESSIONAL

Then there are those who maintain that small talk in a news bulletin looks unprofessional. Newsreaders, they maintain, are icons of seriousness, sobriety, and dignity.

It’s unbecoming for them to clown and play the goat at the end of a news segment. They look like clowns.

Indeed, one would expect viewers to tune in because of the high journalistic standards of a news broadcast, not because of the newsreaders’ chitchat. However, executives believe banter increases viewership.

But is banter good for television news? There is meaningless or silly banter that is a time waster. There is banter that is witty, cute, funny, amusing.

If banter makes the news less boring, if it connects with readers, then it is good. If it is spontaneous and genuine, not contrived, so much the better.

FOUR BANTERS

But there should not be too much banter – because that is not the main business of a news bulletin. Example: In the Wednesday 9 pm news this week, Dennis Okari and Olive Burrows engaged in four banters. One of them saw Ms. Burrows pull out her smart phone to play the song “Purple Rain” for Mr Okari, who did not seem to be hip to the song by Prince and The Revolution (she did not actually play on air the four-minute soundtrack to the film of the same name).

Banter can be counter-productive, too, if it’s forced laughter and laboured joviality, especially when it has nothing to do with the news and it comes across as phony.

Anchors must remain sober and serious at all times even as they engage in small talk. They must always win the respect of their viewers by acting professional and not making goofy or inappropriate comments.

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