It’s 4:40 p.m. Your show is on in twenty minutes. You need to be in the booth, ready for five live reporters, and there’s suddenly breaking news. How will you write the ten teases you have in the show?

Teases feel like a burden. But when they’re written correctly, they’re an effective way to make sure viewers come back to your show. So, how do you write good teases in such little time? It’s easy. Let me show you.

Find an Angle. Promise to Share It.

All news stories have parts that viewers care about. It’s happening in their community. It impacts them or someone they care about. It offers information they can utilize. Read this story from a previous chapter, and let’s figure out what angles work:

“If your garden is plagued with leaf-munching slugs and snails—there’s a new way to redirect that slime trail away from your fruits and vegetables. And the solution is likely already in your kitchen. Oregon State University researchers have discovered that slugs and snails are attracted to bread dough. Researchers estimate the pests do 60- to 100-million dollars in damage to Oregon’s prominent grass seed industry… each year. The team at OSU is not sure why bread dough attracts the pests—they believe it has something to do with fermentation. Slugs and snails chose it over other tasty bait like lettuce, fruit, and beer—and in one case, scientists trapped 18-thousand snails in 48 hours. The dough they used is a simple mixture of flour, water and yeast. If you try it out, let us know what results you notice—you can share your findings in the comments section for this story on our Facebook page.”

Potential angles?

• A new solution to stopping slugs from eating produce.
• You could whip up the solution to this problem right now.
• Tens of millions of dollars could be saved. 
• Slugs prefer it to fruit and beer.
• It caused 18,000 snails trapped in 48 hours.

You have two teases to write and five angles you can use. That’s good. Each well-crafted tease needs two angles—the setup and the punchline.

“Slugs and snails cost Oregon farmers tens of millions of dollars a year. Coming up—the new approach to stopping them that, in one location, lured 18-thousand into a trap in just two days.”

Or…

“If you have a garden, you probably know the damage caused by slugs and snails. Now, there’s a new way to make those pests lose interest in your veggies. Coming up—the solution that’s likely in your kitchen right now.“

There’s nothing complicated with these teases. I took interesting facts from the story and promised viewers I will let them know what those facts are when we return from commercial.

Make It Something Viewers Can’t or Won’t Google

You want to focus on exclusive content. That doesn’t mean the exclusive interview that only your station has. It means to tease something that’s not easily accessible through other means.

If former President Clinton gets drunk and punches a clown in the face, that’s an interesting story. But it’s a bad tease. If I’m at home watching and the anchor says, “Coming up—why a former president is icing his fist tonight after a carnival confrontation,” then I will google that. TMZ has the video, the reactions, the updates, and just got in new video! Do you know what that means? You just lost a viewer.

That said, if the most teasable stories are that and a local shooting, then tease the Clinton thing. Shootings are boring—unless you mined some shiny nuggets.

Be Clever if You Can

Teases are an opportunity to be creative. So be creative. I wrote the following tease for a show at KOIN in Portland:

“Owning the shoes that gave Nike its first small step… could be a giant leap for your checking account. The extremely rare ‘moon shoes’ up for auction — next.”

The anchor loved reading it, and it gave him just enough of a jolt of energy to power through the 6 p.m. news. That’s what a clever tease can do. It can push your show’s momentum forward, carrying it through the commercial break.

However…

Kill Your Darlings if You Have To

You know that clever line you wrote that references an obscure song you love? Kill it…if you have to.

Yes, producing and writing news requires some showmanship to entertain viewers, but it’s more important to be clear. 

Confusion = channel change. Channel change = bad ratings. Bad ratings = time for a new writer or producer.

I mention songs because one day, I decided I would include a Bob Seger song title in every tease I wrote.

• New library hours? “Turn the Page”
• A celebrity acts out overnight? “Hollywood Nights”
• Debris shuts down a roadway? “Like a Rock”

I’m looking at these examples and thinking what you’re thinking: They’re not that clever. Yet at 3:00 a.m. in 2005, I thought on Bob Seger’s birthday, they might be fun. Maybe it gave me enough juice to make some night moves as I struggled to fill a show in Lansing, Michigan, but still here we are with some boring scripts that try to entice viewers to watch my show against the wind of reason.

See how I jammed song lyrics into that paragraph? Totally distracting. They muddle my message. That said, if you can be clever while making sure your sentence is not confusing, go ahead and write that tease till it shines.