“Okay, we’ve got eight lives in this hour and two of the lines are dodgy so look sharp everyone! Joolz, can you hear me?”
“Yes.” I replied, forcing myself to sound confident. The studio director hadn’t been fooled. He was a thirty- year veteran of the news game and knew the difference between anxiety and assuredness.
“You’ll be fine” he whispered confidentially into his microphone, “The first one’s always the hardest. It gets easier as you go along.”
I adjusted my earpiece, which I accidentally dislodged after a “gentle” tug. A make-up girl came into the studio while I was manoeuvring the plastic coil into the snug of my ear. Tiny beads of sweat – summoned by the heat from the overhead lights – gathered on my forehead. With a powder puff in one hand and a make-up brush in the other, they were swept away in one deft movement.
“Good luck” she whispered.
I sipped some water from a glass under the desk and waited for the programme’s opening music. The studio wasn’t big but the shadowy figure of the floor manager behind one of the two remotely controlled cameras made it feel strangely large. Somewhere in the space between the studio and the control room, the director’s voice counted down the seconds to transmission.
“In three, two, one and CUE…run VT!”
“Hello I’m Juliette Foster and these are the headlines at the top of the hour.”
Welcome to what was my first day of anchoring a news programme. Was I nervous? You bet I was – who wouldn’t be explaining complex stories to an audience of millions live on air? Even though you can’t see them you know they’re “out there” watching, listening, picking up on every comment, firing off emails attacking the programme, the guests, or even the anchor. It’s a tough job but somebody had to do it and the director was absolutely right: it did get easier over time.
Nerves are the enemy of anyone who speaks in public. They affect your delivery, tangle your words, and undermine the power of a message. But there’s no reason why you can’t tell your story or share your message with clarity and purpose when you start thinking like a broadcaster. Broadcasters don’t eliminate nerves – we’ve simply learned how to work above them.
1.Start With the Headline, Not the History
Broadcasters never begin with the backstory. That comes later. We’re trained to start with the point and a headline is the encapsulation. Its job is to summarise what the story is about, the thing the audience needs to know. In the real world, most people do the opposite – they warm up, circle around the issue, add context, and only then reveal what it is they want to say. By that point, everyone has drifted off into another realm and it becomes an almighty struggle to win back their attention. Broadcasters have an uncluttered mindset: Lead with the essence. Support it with detail. As a news editor I once had the “pleasure” of working with used to say: “Cut the crap and give me the guts of the story!”
When you tell your story – whether it’s a pitch, a presentation, or a personal introduction – ask yourself the following questions:
- What’s the headline here?
- What’s the one sentence that captures the heart of what I’m trying to say?
- If I had ten seconds, which bit of the story would I lead with?
Once you’ve nailed that, everything else becomes easier.
2.Keep It Tight, Clear, and Uncluttered
One of the great things about live TV is that it teaches you to strip away what’s unnecessary. In a fast-moving environment where a news bulletin’s structure can change in a handful of seconds, there’s no time for rambling, jargon filled speeches. Audiences want clarity and that means delivering information in a way that’s concise and understandable – not dumbed down. Remember to use a broadcaster’s rule of thumb as a guide:
- Make your sentences shorter, don’t clutter them with unnecessary words.
- If a simpler word will do, use it.
- A story becomes more powerful when it’s easier to follow.
3.Control the Pace – Don’t Let the Pace Control You
You’re standing nervously in front of an audience; the palms of your hands are damp with sweat, and your brain feels fuzzy around the edges. You want this moment to be over so you can go home. The problem is you can’t leave until you’ve given the speech that took ages to prepare. So, what else can you do except take a deep breath…and rush your way through it.
Your lovingly crafted speech has become a cascade of jumbled words powered by the mother of all adrenaline surges. A few hours ago, it made perfect sense – but not now, as the bewildered expressions in front of you make perfectly clear. You’ve unintentionally delivered a masterclass in outrunning your own nerves. Broadcasters do the opposite:
- We slow down.
- We breath.
- We let the silence work for us.
A welltimed pause is one of the most authoritative tools you have. It signals confidence, composure, and command – even when your heart feels as if it’s doing out of vision somersaults. The beauty of a pause is that it gives you time to think, settle, and quietly gather your thoughts.
4.Speak to One Person, not a Crowd
This is one of the biggest secrets of broadcasting – and it works. In my anchoring days, I learned to ignore the fact that an audience was watching me. On one level it was easy because I couldn’t see them, but in my mind’s eye I imagined I was talking to a single person who was listening from the comfort of their arm chair.
When you shift from addressing a crowd to speaking to an individual, everything changes. Your tone softens, your language becomes more human, and your message lands with far greater impact. When I make speeches or moderate conferences, I’ll often fix my attention on one person at random – and from that point addressing an entire room becomes effortless.
Try it the next time you speak. Imagine there’s one person who genuinely needs to hear what you have to say. Once you speak to them, the whole audience becomes yours.
5.Let Your Personality Through the Cracks
People don’t connect with polish – they connect with presence. The best broadcasters aren’t highly paid robots delivering information. They’re human beings with warmth, humour, and perspective. One of the reasons Claudia Winkelman resonates so strongly with audiences is because she’s quirky and never hides the fact that she’s having fun. Her authenticity is contagious and viewers feel as though she’s someone they could easily get to know and like.
When you let your personality show, the story you tell becomes meaningful because it’s real – not rehearsed or over managed. Authenticity isn’t a performance it’s a permission slip. It tells your audience, “You can relax. I’m human too.” And that’s when connection happens.
6.And Finally: Work Above the Nerves
Okay, so this brings us back to where we started – and that’s no bad thing.
Nerves don’t disappear overnight nor do they magically evaporate with time and experience. I’ve met seasoned broadcasters who dazzle in the TV studios and in front of live audiences, yet behind the scenes they’re pulsing with tension. When you watch them at work, it’s hard to believe they were on edge, but they’ve disciplined themselves to take control of every programme and live moment.
There’s no reason why you can’t do that too:
- Your voice may tremble inside, but your delivery can still be steady.
- Your stomach may be doing 180-degree flips, but that doesn’t mean your message can’t land.
- Your mind may want to race, but your story can still be clear.
Confidence isn’t the absence of fear. It’s the decision to speak anyway – and the knowledge that your message matters more than your nerves. When you put all of this together – the headline, the clarity, the pace, the presence, the personality – something shifts. You stop performing and start communicating. You stop worrying about how you sound and start focusing on what you’re saying. And that’s when your voice becomes bigger than your nerves.
Because the truth is simple: you don’t need to be fearless to speak well. You just need to be willing. Willing to show up, willing to breathe, willing to let your humanity shine through the cracks. When you do that, your audience doesn’t hear your anxiety – they hear you. And that’s the moment you stop surviving the spotlight and start owning it.
