Talkback, Cue and Standby: Live Position Terms Explained

Why live work has its own vocabulary

I spend most of my days in an edit suite, but I have been on the other end of enough live reports to know how much weight a single word carries. When a reporter is standing in a car park in the rain, with a gallery listening many miles away, nobody has time to explain themselves. So the trade uses short, fixed words, and everyone on the circuit agrees what each one means.

This note covers the terms that come up most often when we provide camera, lighting and sound for a live report from a fixed position. If you commission live positions, you will hear these words on the day. If you work in a newsroom, you will use them yourself. Knowing the plain meaning of each avoids the small misunderstandings that cost seconds, and seconds are what a live slot is made of.

Talkback: the private line

Talkback is the two-way audio channel between the gallery or control room and the people at the position. It is separate from the programme sound that viewers hear. The reporter wears an earpiece, and the camera operator and sound technician usually have headsets, so the producer can speak to them without anything reaching the broadcast.

It matters because live work changes in the last minute. A producer may ask the reporter to shorten an answer, move a step to the left, or hold because an earlier item is running long. All of that travels by talkback. When we set up a position, testing talkback comes before the picture is even checked, because a camera with no way to hear the gallery is only half a live position.

Standby, cue and the countdown

Standby is a warning, not an instruction to start. When the gallery says standby to the position, it means you are next, be ready, stop adjusting things. The reporter takes a breath, the camera operator checks the frame one last time, and the technician keeps their hands off the faders.

The cue is the instruction itself. In a live report it often arrives as a countdown given on talkback, ending in silence so the voice does not leak into the broadcast, followed by a visual or audible signal to begin. We do not guess at cues. Our crews agree beforehand who will give the reporter the signal, which is usually the camera operator, so the reporter looks at the lens and not at a person standing beside it.

• Standby means be ready, not begin
• Cue means begin now
• The countdown ends in silence, not on the last number

Going to the reporter, and clean feed

Two more phrases are worth knowing. Going to the reporter means the presenter in the studio hands over to the position, and the first words viewers hear should be the reporter's. It is why the reporter has to be listening to programme sound in their earpiece, so they know exactly when the presenter has finished asking the question.

Clean feed is the audio mix with the reporter's own voice taken out. A reporter hears the studio and the gallery through it, never their own words repeated back with a delay, which is deeply distracting. Callum Reid, our sound and lighting technician, sets up the clean feed at every position before anything else is tested, and it is one of the first things he checks again if a reporter says something sounds wrong.

Last-minute checks at a fixed position

Autumn adds its own conditions. Daylight fades earlier, so a report that begins in good light can end in near darkness, and the lighting set at the start has to be judged against the light that will remain at the time of transmission. Wet weather affects microphones and lenses, and a position under a shop canopy may need its sound checked again once the wind picks up.

Before a live slot we walk through the same short list, and it is the same list whether the position is a pavement or a field. None of it is clever. It simply means the crew is not discovering a problem while the gallery is waiting on the line.

• Talkback and clean feed tested both ways
• Frame, focus and exposure set against the light due at transmission
• Cable runs taped down and the reporter's mark chosen
• Who gives the cue agreed out loud

What this means when you book a position

If you are a news editor commissioning a live position, you do not need to learn all of this. It helps to know that the words are fixed on purpose, and that a crew who uses them precisely is a crew that has done this before. Tell us the transmission time, the location, how the gallery will reach us, and who will be on the line, and we will plan the rest.

If you are newer to live work, ask questions beforehand and not on the day. A reporter who knows what standby means and where to look at the cue gives a calmer, clearer report. The vocabulary is small, and it takes about ten minutes to learn at the position. That is time well spent before the first live shot.