Larry from Sparks, Georgia, wonders why television announcers and newscasters say welcome back! after a commercial when he, the viewer, didn’t go anywhere. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Why Do Television Shows Welcome Viewers Back After Commercials?”
Hey there, you have A Way with Words.
Yes, hello. This is Larry Brandhorst.
I’m calling you from a little town of Sparks, Georgia, right at the moment.
What can we do for you, Larry?
I was wondering, these newscasters, like news shows or talk shows or whatever, and even on the radio, if like I’m sitting there listening, and they go to a commercial break, and then when they get done with their commercial break, they always go like, welcome back. And I’m going like, welcome back? What do you mean welcome back? I didn’t go anywhere. You guys are the ones that left me. Even if I was watching the show and I was really interested in it, they left. And then they’re welcoming me back. So it’s like they got it 180 degrees backwards.
Okay.
I got a couple things to say that I think will take a little bit of the edge off of this for you. All right?
Okay.
One of those is that the welcome back is part of the glue of broadcasting, as it’s sometimes called. And we use this on radio, too, where you’ve got to do things to ease people in and out of the different segments of the show. And you can’t make too many assumptions about what happened in between, both what happened on the station’s side, the radio station or television station side, or on the listener’s side. So those television shows that you’re watching, they don’t know maybe what the local station did in between their segments. They don’t have a lot of control over the commercials, for example, necessarily, except maybe even if they’re local news. So they’ve got to come up with something fairly basic to kind of cover all the eventualities to ease you out and to ease you back in.
The other thing they want to do is they want to make it brief. They want to do something simple. Welcome back is two words. It kind of does the job. And they want to make it friendly. Welcome does that. But there’s another thing. There’s a linguistic concept here known as the least expenditure of effort. And the linguists who have proposed this talk about how a lot of our social transactions are formalities that are pretty much meaningless, except that they fill this back and forth ritual. When you go to the grocery store and you’re in the checkout line, you say hello to the clerk and they say hello back. And they say, or they say, how are you? And you say, how are you? And neither one of you really cares all that much, but you’re required by social convention to have that back and forth. And this happens a lot of the times in a lot of places. You know, when you’re in the workplace and you pass a coworker that you see 15 times a day, you make some kind of gesture, either a grunt or a noise or a head nod or something to acknowledge their presence. So sometimes you just raise your eyebrows a little bit because the social convention requires that you make some expenditure of effort, but it’s the least expenditure of effort. It doesn’t matter what it is. And so welcome back fills that. It’s the least expenditure of effort that they can do just to meet that social convention.
Well, Larry, now you have me feeling self-conscious because, of course, on this show, after we take a break, we come back and we say, you’re listening to A Way with Words. You’re probably sitting there going, I know. No, no, I don’t do that. I just, it’s the welcome back. It’s like I’m, I actually left and I did something and came back. That’s the part that, you know, so like when when somebody comes in to work the next day and stuff and I’m already there early and I’ll say, hey, welcome back. And they look at me like I go, well, you left and you went home and stuff and you came back to work, didn’t you? They go, oh yeah, yeah, and then we start or whatever, you know.
But Martha, i I think I agree with Larry. I think if I were scripting a show like that, I would just skip the welcome back and just say, as soon as I started the segment, I would say, today we’re talking with Larry about greeting and saying, hello, Larry, welcome. Larry, you were saying before the break, blah, blah, blah. Like, I would just go right into the segment and just skip the welcome back because either way, all I have to do is summarize what we’re doing and go right into the segment, right? Or take the opportunity to, you know, get some exercise, run around the house and then come back.
That’s not wrong. Make them truthful. Actually go away. Help them out.
Yeah, but then I might miss the welcome back and I’d have to just come in and jump in, you know.
Either way.
Oh, Larry, we’re going to get so many calls about this and people who agree with you and have better ideas for the TV folks. I just know who we are. So thank you for opening that can of worms, and we’ll be sure to share what people have to say on the show, okay?
Yeah, no problem. I appreciate it. You guys enjoy the day. Thank you.
All right. Be careful out there.
For sure.
All right. Bye-bye.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
What should television people be saying when they come back from a break?
Email words@waywordradio.org.
