Dressing the Part (1)

The attention lavished by members of the viewing public and the newspaper industry on those who appear regularly on the television screen has developed into something approaching an international pastime. Such is the level of interest, gossip and comment, it has become possible to believe that discussion about almost any night’s television news centres as much on what the main female presenter was wearing–and speculation as to what it might have cost–as on programme content.

Keeping the audience’s attention

Dress should not be important, but it is, because an audience concentrating on a frilly blouse, a plunging neckline or a tie with a curious motif will be distracted from what is being said. And that audience, once distracted, is lost to the reporter and the programme. So it is essential that what the reporter/presenter wears is both unremarkable and appropriate for the occasion. Extrovert clothes may be acceptable for a programme aimed at a teenage or fashion-conscious audience, not for the main mid-evening news. While a safari-style suit may look right for reporting from the scene of a jungle war, it would scarcely do for conducting a formal studio interview with a leading politician. Similarly, the ‘office’ suit and tie is out of place in the jungle. In both cases, common sense and good manners will offend neither the interviewee nor the viewer, who in most countries is surprisingly easily offended by lapses from what he or she understands as accepted standards of behaviour.

Programme dress rules

Programmes sometimes impose their own styles of dress on their performers as part of a co-ordinated ‘look’ intended to create the overall tone they wish to impart to the viewer: for example, reporters and presenters on breakfast shows may be required to wear sweaters or other casual clothes to fit in with the easy chairs and coffee tables surrounding them on the set; an evening news programme may seek to create an entirely different atmosphere by putting its talent into more formal wear and an austere set; others are known to make it mandatory for on-screen performers to wear company ‘uniform’, and so on. At the same time, common sense dictates that a reporter arriving first at the scene of a major breaking news story should not risk missing it by taking time to change into programme-style clothes.

If the reporter does not have a firm set of ‘dress-on-duty’ rules to go by–and this probably applies to the majority–the one infallible guideline is simply to dress in a way which does not invite notice. Keep the eye-catching items for off-duty days.

Dress

Clothes should match the mood of the programme and assignment.

1. The reporter covering a story in the jungle looks right in a bush shirt.

2. But formal wear is more appropriate for the studio …

3. … especially when the interviewee is ‘correctly’ dressed.

4. The wrong choice can create embarrassment all round.