SOUND BITE

noun (Lifestyle and Leisure) (Politics) A short, pithy extract from a recorded interview, speech, etc. used for maximum punchiness as part of a news or party political broadcast; also, a one-liner deliberately produced to be used in this way. Etymology: Formed by compounding. The use of bite here both puts across the idea of a snatch of soundtrack taken from a longer whole and includes undertones of the high-tech approach to units of information (bytes). History and Usage: The term has been in use among radio and television journalists in the US for some time, and first appeared in print in the early eighties. Perhaps because of developments in television newscasting techniques in the eighties, it has become more and more prevalent, reflecting the view that the public will not follow more than a few seconds of speech from any single interview, although several minutes from a reporter will be fine. (In television journalism sound bites are often interspersed with a reporter's pr÷cis of a speaker's words as a voice-over to a soundless film of the speaker.) The technique, as well as the term, came to public notice during the US presidential campaign of 1988, when sound bites were used to great effect on the campaign trail and in televised debates between the protagonists. Remember that any editor watching needs a concise, 30-second sound bite. Anything more than that and you're losing them. Washington Post 22 June 1980, section 1, p. 1 This has been the election of the 'sound-bite', the 20-second film clip on the evening television news which defines most Americans' view of the day's campaigning. The Bush campaign...has been consistently out-biting the Dukakis camp. Independent 24 Sept. 1988, p. 10