Why Do So Many News Anchors Sound Alike?

Why do so many news anchors sound alike?

No matter which channel you tune into or

what local broadcast you receive, news

anchors share one common trait beyond

professional attire and perfect hair,

they tend to sound exactly the same.

From their cadence to annunciation to a

completely curious lack of a regional

accent. How does that happen?

Broadcasters didn't always sound so

geographically neutral. In the early

part of the 20th century, many radio

personalities and performers adopted

what was known as a mid-atlantic accent

or a blend of mannered British and the

East Coast dialect of the United States.

This polished proper method of speaking

was popular in Hollywood movies of the

1930s and on radio because it signaled

some kind of upper class education and

arudition. Thanks to America's

infatuation with England, sounding even

vaguely British made people sound

intelligent. Pundits like William

F.Buckley Jr. carried the Mid-Atlantic

torch even as it fell out of favor in

entertainment. The more contemporary

practice of sounding linguistically

neutral is often referred to as having a

general American accent, which is a bit

misleading since there's really not much

of an accent at all. Also referred to as

standard American, broadcast English, or

network English. General American was a

term first used in the 1920s and 30s by

linguists who wanted to isolate a more

widespread accent than the New England

or southern dialects. The scholar George

Philip Crap used the phrase in his 1925

book, The English Language in America.

Linguist John Kenyon referred to it in

his 1930 title, American Pronunciation,

where he insisted that 90 million

Americans spoke general American. As the

century wore on, a wider range of

regional accents were recognized, and it

became almost impossible to generalize

between New England, Southern, and

General American. Though some linguists

disagree on the definition of general

American, it's still largely considered

a speaking voice that lacks regional

flare. So why do news anchors rely on

it? One of the biggest reasons is to

keep their employment opportunities

open. Local anchors who deliver the

nightly news for affiliate stations are

often vagabonds, taking jobs across the

country, and those different networks

prefer a general American accent. If an

anchor hailing from the South committed

to delivering the day's top stories in a

southern accent, for example, it's not

likely a New York station would feel

viewers could warm to them. Likewise, a

Brooklyn accent might sound peculiar

when Los Angeles residents want a

rundown of local headlines. But an

accent is only a portion of a

broadcaster's delivery. At broadcasting

schools, television journalists are

trained to speak at a moderate speed and

enunciate each word clearly. Whether

they realize it or not, young

broadcasters may also start out

emulating their news anchor heroes who

had impeccable diction like Walter

Kankite or Ted Cppel. No letters are

dropped. Sentences are composed for ease

of reading off a teleprompter. Plain

speaking also needs to fit whatever

footage is being shown while the anchor

is talking. Uneven modulation could be

distracting, though. Some anchors do

choose to emphasize words by drawing

them out, like murder dair, or adopt a

more somber tone when reporting on

tragic events. Some anchors have also

reported being more careful with their

speech because broadcast microphones are

often unforgiving. Words beginning with

P tend to pop, for example. Broadcasting

school drills out the kind of casual and

conversational voice that doesn't

translate well to a newscast. Of course,

some linguists believe there's no such

thing as being totally free of an

accent. A southerner trying to remove

any trace of a draw is going to sound

different than someone from New England

attempting to do the same. We may not

notice simply because humans aren't that

great at recognizing more subtle

accents, especially our own.

Broadcasters may sound alike in large

part because they all enunciate and

attempt to achieve articuly precision.

Few anchors will say dubia. They will

say double u.