Bert Decker has just posted a very interesting piece arguing that President Obama’s use of the teleprompter isn’t doing any favours for his reputation as a great communicator.
This doesn’t surprise me, because I’ve always thought it a rather mixed blessing since seeing Margaret Thatcher’s performance deteriorate after she moved from using a script on a lectern to reading from teleprompter screens.
Before 1982, she never used a teleprompter. But, on seeing Ronald Reagan using it in a masterly speech to both houses of parliament that year, she was apparently so impressed that she told her aides that she wanted one too - and, a few months later she tried it out at the annual conference of the Conservative Party.
The immediate result was a dramatic fall in the amount of applause she received. In her 1981 Conference speech, she’d achieved the astonishing average of one burst of applause for every three sentences she uttered. A year later, aided, or rather abetted, by the teleprompter, her applause rate fell by about 35%.
One reason for this was that it interfered with an extremely regular part her delivery. When using a script on a lectern, she would routinely lower her eyes and head towards the text during the last two or three syllables as she approached a completion point (e.g. the end of the second part of a contrast or the third item in a list).
If anyone in the audience still wasn't sure that she’d finished and it was time to respond (i.e, applaud), any such doubt was eliminated by two more non-verbal signals: she would close her mouth tightly and audibly clear her throat.
In some of her speeches from a lectern, this didn’t just happen now and then, but on every single occasion she was applauded. You can see examples of the routine as she delivers two consecutive contrasts at the start of her third successful general election campaign in 1987:
Whereas this all worked pretty smoothly to trigger instantaneous applause, it was a very different story when Mrs Thatcher's eyes were fixed on teleprompter screens instead of a lectern. She no longer looked down towards the script as she came to a completion point, but gazed beyond the screens into thin air.
The removal of these decisive and unambiguous signals that she’d definitely finished and it was time to applaud meant that it didn’t happen as often as it did when could return her eyes to the lectern.
The line in this first example should have been guaranteed to get applause from any Tory party audience in 1982:
THATCHER “.. this is why we need nuclear weapons, because having them makes peace more secure.”
But, as you'll see, nothing happens, other than some rapid eye-blinking and a long pause from Mrs Thatcher before continuing, perhaps indicating that she’d both noticed and was surprised by the lack of applause:
In the next example, the audience does applaud after the second part of a contrast, but only after a delay of about half a second and then for noticeably less than the ‘standard’ 8 seconds (for more on ‘standard’ bursts of applause, see HERE) .
THATCHER: “We all want peace, but not peace at any price; peace with justice and freedom.”
Once the slight delay is over and the applause is underway, you can see that Mrs Thatcher half closes her mouth and then, looks down towards the lectern – after the applause had started rather than before it, as would have happened had she been reading from the lectern:
Although these may seem to be small details, there were so many of them in her 1982 conference speech that it's easy to pick out enough similar examples to be unsurprised that she got so much less applause than in the previous year.
For Mrs Thatcher, it brought with it other new, and rather odd-looking, changes to the way her eyes and body had previously moved. Sometimes, her eyes would remain fixed on one screen as her shoulders started moving towards the other one. Then, once the shoulders were in position, her head and eyes would dart very quickly and suddenly from one screen to the other, as if she wasn't going to take any chances about losing her place.
So this is why I started by saying that teleprompters are a mixed blessing for speakers. Few, including, it appears, President Obama can match Ronald Reagan's mastery of the technology. And some, like Margaret Thatcher, were considerably more effective reading from a script on sheets of paper resting on a lectern than when reading from transparent screens in front of them.
I first came across teleprompters when writing Our Masters' Voices 25 years ago. In those days, they used to be called 'sincerity machines' – and that, perhaps, is precisely the problem with them.
Jargon & gobbledygook refresher course
Ahead of the holiday period, this video might help you to get your ducks in a row when it’s time to get up to the plate again going forward - and two earlier posts might help to get the issues up the flag pole HERE and HERE.
But Sky News can hardly claim to be innocent when it comes to telling us that something is happening ahead of something else when what they mean is 'before'.
But Sky News can hardly claim to be innocent when it comes to telling us that something is happening ahead of something else when what they mean is 'before'.
How many numbers can you get into a minute?
A few months ago, I made the point that Gordon Brown tends to pack far too much information into his speeches and still has to take notice of a crucial tip from Winston Churchill about simplicity.
In his final press conference before the Summer recess, he was at it again. At one stage, as you can see below, he managed to mention nine numbers in less than a minute.
The trouble is that a lot of people glaze over when numbers come at them so thick and fast – a problem that’s even worse if, as in this case, they’re delivered in a flat monotonous tone of voice.
And the importance of speakers conveying enthusiasm for their subjects cannot be overestimated – for the very obvious reason that, if a speaker sounds bored by his or her subject matter, why should the audience feel any less bored, let alone be inspired by it?
Add to this Mr Brown’s earnest facial expression and it's hardly surprising that he’s so often referred to ‘dour’.
In his final press conference before the Summer recess, he was at it again. At one stage, as you can see below, he managed to mention nine numbers in less than a minute.
The trouble is that a lot of people glaze over when numbers come at them so thick and fast – a problem that’s even worse if, as in this case, they’re delivered in a flat monotonous tone of voice.
And the importance of speakers conveying enthusiasm for their subjects cannot be overestimated – for the very obvious reason that, if a speaker sounds bored by his or her subject matter, why should the audience feel any less bored, let alone be inspired by it?
Add to this Mr Brown’s earnest facial expression and it's hardly surprising that he’s so often referred to ‘dour’.
Will The Times be investigating Lord Rees-Mogg’s House of Lords expenses?
Today’s Times on Line has a story about Lord Bhatia’s House of Lords expenses claims.
This raises the interesting question of whether they are going to be as thorough in their investigations as the Telegraph was with it’s stories about MP’s expenses.
If so, they might like to start with one of their own columnists, William Rees-Mogg.
A previous post on this blog reported that, in the last year for which details were available at the time, Lord Rees-Mogg drew £41,463 in tax-free allowances. £8,923 of this was for ‘office costs’, part of which is quite likely to have helped to subsidise journalistic activities for The Times and other newspapers.
Why is the MoD involved in planning Harry Patch's funeral?
Harry Patch, who died yesterday, was a familiar face to those of us who read the Wells Journal every week and had become nationally famous as the last surviving Tommy from WW1.
Funeral services in Wells Cathedral are not available for everyone who dies in this area, but I’m sure there will be widespread local consensus that, if anyone deserves a send-off in the Cathedral, Harry Patch certainly does.
The only thing that seems a bit odd about the plan is the following announcement on the BBC website, that has been echoed in a lot of other media reportage:
‘The Ministry of Defence said there would be a funeral cortege through Wells followed by a service at Wells Cathedral.’
This raises the question of whether the MoD has a say in where the funerals of all ex-servicemen are to be held, not to mention whether there is some kind of hotline or special influence between MoD and the Dioceses of Bath and Wells?
At the risk of sounding ungracious, disrespectful or even a little suspicious, I can't help wondering if the MoD’s apparent involvement in planning Mr Patch’s funeral has something to with the PR attractions of holding such a high profile event for a famous war veteran at a time when we're hearing almost daily news of British deaths in Afghanistan.
Funeral services in Wells Cathedral are not available for everyone who dies in this area, but I’m sure there will be widespread local consensus that, if anyone deserves a send-off in the Cathedral, Harry Patch certainly does.
The only thing that seems a bit odd about the plan is the following announcement on the BBC website, that has been echoed in a lot of other media reportage:
‘The Ministry of Defence said there would be a funeral cortege through Wells followed by a service at Wells Cathedral.’
This raises the question of whether the MoD has a say in where the funerals of all ex-servicemen are to be held, not to mention whether there is some kind of hotline or special influence between MoD and the Dioceses of Bath and Wells?
At the risk of sounding ungracious, disrespectful or even a little suspicious, I can't help wondering if the MoD’s apparent involvement in planning Mr Patch’s funeral has something to with the PR attractions of holding such a high profile event for a famous war veteran at a time when we're hearing almost daily news of British deaths in Afghanistan.
Clarke has more to say about Brown than a few weeks ago
In the wake of Labour's loss of the Norwich North by-election, it looks as though former Home Secretary Charles Clarke is less reluctant to tell us what he thinks of Gordon Brown than he was five weeks ago.
Here's what he said then:
Q: "Will you tell us what you think about Gordon Brown?"
A: "No."
But today's BBC website has rather more detail on what Mr Clarke thinks of Mr Brown now:
Ex-home secretary Charles Clarke blamed the result on Mr Brown's "incompetent" treatment of outgoing MP Dr Ian Gibson … Mr Clarke - the MP for neighbouring Norwich South and a long-time critic of the prime minister - said there had been no "guiding principles" to the prime minister's handling of the expenses scandal.
"What happened to Ian Gibson was not fair and many, many people felt that," Mr Clarke told the BBC. "You need the transparency, you need a comprehensive approach, you need fairness and you need it to be done quickly and these things didn't happen."
Here's what he said then:
Q: "Will you tell us what you think about Gordon Brown?"
A: "No."
But today's BBC website has rather more detail on what Mr Clarke thinks of Mr Brown now:
Ex-home secretary Charles Clarke blamed the result on Mr Brown's "incompetent" treatment of outgoing MP Dr Ian Gibson … Mr Clarke - the MP for neighbouring Norwich South and a long-time critic of the prime minister - said there had been no "guiding principles" to the prime minister's handling of the expenses scandal.
"What happened to Ian Gibson was not fair and many, many people felt that," Mr Clarke told the BBC. "You need the transparency, you need a comprehensive approach, you need fairness and you need it to be done quickly and these things didn't happen."
Book plugging news
It's 10 days since I posted some comments about the impact of BBC 'plug-a-book' shows on sales, following a mention of Speech-making and Presentation Made Easy (see above) on the BBC website.
As expected, it soon slipped back from its all-time high of 1,841st in the Amazon bestsellers chart, but it's still been averaging about 220,000 places higher than it was before the plug on the BBC website.
What this means in terms of actual sales, I'll have to wait for news from the publishers.
But, with the ever-growing domination of booksellers like Waterstones, Amazon and word-of-mouth are becoming even more important to frustrated authors, and the book's current placing prompts a degree of cautious optimism that it might have just about reached lift-off.
As expected, it soon slipped back from its all-time high of 1,841st in the Amazon bestsellers chart, but it's still been averaging about 220,000 places higher than it was before the plug on the BBC website.
What this means in terms of actual sales, I'll have to wait for news from the publishers.
But, with the ever-growing domination of booksellers like Waterstones, Amazon and word-of-mouth are becoming even more important to frustrated authors, and the book's current placing prompts a degree of cautious optimism that it might have just about reached lift-off.
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