Recently I noticed it again. The sentence “this was the eight o’ clock news, have a nice evening” had just been said, and that moralistic Dutch public News channel tune played again. Unfortunately, this tune goes hand in hand with some seconds (12 seconds according to the standard) of live television. Actually, this scene (a studio that gets darker with a newsreader who is fading dark) has no surplus to the news that just had been showed. But, in Newsland, this practise is facing considerable problems.

One has to imagine that the average newsreader has done no extra preparations for this extra seconds of being on the air. What must he do during these extra seconds, of which, surely HE is the middle point since we can still see him while he becomes slowly covered by darkness? In Newsland this problem is known as the “transition” and many newsreader suffers under this phenomenon. Of course, as you might have noticed, the creative newsreader has already find tools and methods to overcome this little problem. Two of the most used techniques I will discuss.

1. Make sure you have on the desk: a pen, the “papers” and of course a map. During the end melody you can entertain the viewer with a show of desk-cleaning. One puts with a lot of showing off the pen in the inner pocket of the jacket, then, if time is left, one shuffles the papers on the desk…up and down, several times, with a sense of theatre, with a dramatic smile, this all in order to put these papers in the map – a map, that has buttons to open and close if time is left. While doing so, the putting-in-the map as a sort of climax of desk cleaning performance, the newsreader flashes that quasi sexy wink in the camera. Hell drive you insane. The routine newsreader practises this several times at home with a stopwatch so that he is able to get up at the precise timing when the melody is finished.
2. “Entertaining cleaning” was popular in the nineties, in the new millennium we see that the focus is more on the personality of the newsreader.

The reader has arranged/paid someone who, during the endtune and the upcoming darkness, steps upto him with some sort of remark. The viewer of course doesn’t get to know what the content is of that remark, but from the laughing face of the newsreader, one can derive it has to be more or less funny. A step further (depending on the popularity/ budget of the newsreader) this particular man can walk up to the newsreader with a congratulating hand (“what a wonderful broadcast!!!”), there are even some of these men who start applauding, not to mention those who overdo it, as they walk upto the newsreader while falling on their knees. – this all while the darker getting studio makes place for the commercials. Until now the newsreader seems to deal with the extra 12 seconds. What may we expect from the “transition” in the near future?