TV OVERUSED WORD BINGO

BY DAN MILLER
(posted on August 18, 2004)

Doing continuous coverage of hurricanes on TV is obviously not an easy thing.
Having never worked in Florida, it’s not something I’ve had to do.
But, as with any ongoing live coverage, for reporters, anchors and meteorologists, the descriptive words start running together, and repetition sets in quickly.

My old pal Al Tompkins (formerly ND here at channel 4 - now with the Poynter Institute) reports that a friend of his in St. Petersburg told him something interesting.
She said during the evacuations for Hurricane Charley on Friday, she and her son played “hunker down bingo”.

They would wait until somebody on TV would say the words “hunker down”, then they flipped the channel and waited for the next utterance of those same words.
She says they stayed busy for hours.

I must admit I’ve played the same game. Not with “hunker down”, but with other overused words on TV.
There was a person here in Nashville who said “absolutely” to the point where several of us were keeping score. I believe 12 times in 15 minutes was the record.
I would often turn on the TV and say, “I’ll just stay here for one ‘absolutely’, then I’ll be ready to go”.
Once, I couldn’t believe my ears when it was the very first word out of this person’s mouth.

If you want to play “Tv word bingo” at home, here’s a list of some words you can’t go wrong with.
1. OFFICIALS ... sometimes it appears in nearly every news story. It’s easy attribution. But don’t bet on it when I’m reading. I often take it out.
2. ALLEGEDLY ... Its become the great safety net of TV news to keep us out of lawsuits.
3. SUSPECT ... It’s used in crime stories everyday, and used incorrectly as often as not.
Good luck!

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