Voice and Communication in News Anchors: What is the Impact of the Passage of Time?

Introduction: News anchors, as high-performance voice professionals, may be subject to voice and communication changes throughout their careers.

Objective: To compare the overall degree of vocal deviation, use of vocal and nonverbal resources, pleasantness and expressiveness of Brazilian journalists - news anchors - at 2 time points: at the beginning of their career and late in their career, when they are at an old age.

Methods: A longitudinal observational study that analyzed voice samples collected indirectly from 20 professional male journalists at 2 time points with a minimum interval of 25 years: at the beginning of the career (T1) and at present (T2). The journalists were 60 years old or older, and the samples were narratives with similar communicative content. The overall degree of vocal deviation and use of vocal resources (presence/absence of vocal alteration, vocal attack, loudness, pitch, resonance, articulation of speech sounds, speech speed and breath-speech coordination) and nonverbal resources (emphasis, pauses, rhythm and loudness and pitch variations) were analyzed. Nine judges analyzed the expressiveness and pleasantness of the participants' voices.

The Results: The mean age of the participants was 38.6 years at T1 and 73.7 years at T2. Differences observed between T1 and T2 included greater overall degree of deviation at T2; greater presence of vocal alterations; and worsening of vocal attack, loudness, pitch, articulation and breath-speech coordination. A directly proportional correlation between pleasantness and expressiveness and an inversely proportional correlation between pleasantness and expressiveness and the overall degree of vocal deviation were observed.

Conclusion: Worsening of some vocal aspects was observed; however, the participants' nonverbal characteristics, pleasantness and expressiveness were unchanged throughout their careers.