Radiohead

Listen to a news broadcast. Or sports radio. Or anything where there's an announcer. They all speak in this announcer voice, and it's rather annoying. How did they learn to speak like this? Are they told "Look here, son [why is it never, look here, daughter?], you can't talk like you normally talk and expect to be taken seriously! Work on your radio voice."

Now some people seem to have a perfectly good speaking voice without having to devolve into radiotalk. Tony Kornheiser, Mike Wilbon, Jon Stewart. On the flip side, there are people like Mike Greenberg, Diane Rehm, Irving R. Levine, and so forth.

Can't you people speak in something less grating to the ear? Are there studies that show that speaking in radiospeak lets you get through words that much faster. You hear it all the time on airplanes when you receive useful directions such as how to fasten and unfasten seatbelts, breathing with the masks, and so forth.

The worst folks are people just learning how to speak in radiospeak. Prime examples of these are announcers for high school sports. Awful.

I suppose it could be worse. Most athletes would improve a notch if they could learn to speak in radiospeak. Many struggle to string sentences together. I know. It's not easy. I'm often surprised shows like 60 Minutes manage to have interviewees that sound coherent instead of fumbling over their words, being self-conscious in front of the cameras, and so forth. I'm sure it all gets edited out if it's that bad.

Americans, as a whole, really should learn better public speaking. We'd all benefit.