14Anchoring II
2013
The TelePrompTer, known informally as “the prompter,” shows the anchor about five lines of copy at a time. Each line consists of three to five words. The lines move upward. The camera sits directly behind the mirrored glass where the lines appear. So when you are reading those lines, you are looking directly into the lens. (You must practice this on the CD-Rom where there is a working simulation of a prompter for you to read.) At the networks, there is a person whose only job is to run the prompter. It used to roll a paper script at a preset timing. Today, it’s all in the computer, there is no more paper prompter script.