Why do all broadcasters sound the same? Vocal coaches say it has to do with outdated ideas about professionalism.

• A viral clip showed a journalist slipping from her "broadcast voice" to her natural Boston accent.
• The typical broadcast speech pattern, which lacks a regional accent, is a holdover from the 1970s.

New Hampshire. Khakis. Water.

Depending on where in the United States you are located, these words may sound very different when spoken by people with regional accents. But you'll rarely hear these differences when surfing through news broadcasts and listening to the anchors speak.

A viral clip of a journalist slipping from her carefully-practiced "broadcast voice" into her natural Boston accent captured the internet's attention this weekend and prompted a virtual discussion of media standards and the lack of regional accents in broadcast news.

"The response has been amazing," Ellen Fleming, the reporter for local news station WWLP-22News who posted the video of herself, told Insider. "I didn't expect it to go viral, I just thought it was a silly video. I had colleagues in the past tell me to drop the accent for the industry, so I've been working on it."

Experts told Insider the stereotypical broadcast voice, identified by crisp enunciation and a distinct lack of regional accent, is a holdover from newscasts of the 1970s and 1980s, when media was less diverse and expectations of professionalism meant everyone looked and sounded the same.

"There was definitely a set pattern that people wanted to follow, whether it be the way they presented the news with the voice, or the way they presented themselves in a visual sense as well," Kathleen Cairns, a vocal trainer for journalists and communications strategist for the reputation agency The Fallston Group, told Insider. "You know, women had the same hair. Men tried to look the same way."

Shirley Brice, the founder and owner of Talent Trainers coaching services, told Insider that women broadcasters of the time were expected to practice lowering their voices and avoid a very feminine intonation — and that unspoken expectation remains as pervasive today as it was during her years as a broadcaster in the late 1990s. Fleming told Insider she, too, still practices speaking with a lower voice for broadcasts.

In early nightly news broadcasts, characterized by anchors like Walter Cronkite, journalists spoke with an authoritative cadence and rhotic dialect. Rhotic speakers enunciate hard "r" sound in words like car, bar, and farm, and everywhere they are written in a word, where non-rhotic pronunciations shift "r" sounds to an "ah" sounds, like cah, bah, or fahm or selectively enunciate hard "r" sounds.

"There is something called a broadcast news type voice," Brice told Insider. "And I really try to coach people to not have that voice. In fact, I coach routinely people to sound more like themselves. People try to emulate other anchors and reporters, and in my opinion, it gets them in trouble."

While broadcasters still usually use rhotic pronunciations, vocal coaches like Brice and Cairns now focus more on training away hissing "s" sounds, and reducing upspeak and vocal fry when working with journalists. Upspeak involves the tone of the speaker raising instead of falling at the end of a sentence as if asking a question, while vocal fry is a specific rattling of the vocal cords — often characterized as a "Valley Girl" voice — that some listeners find grating.

"We've definitely evolved, just as the news industry has evolved, into a different mindset," Cairns told Insider, adding that listeners now look for signs of authenticity from their media personalities. "With people being flooded with content, their expectations have changed. People don't want the typical woman with the big head of hair and the perfect voice, looking a certain way."

Instead of trying to eliminate regional accents like Fleming's Boston pronunciations, Cairns told Insider, speakers who speak with accents should focus only on making sure their speech patterns aren't distracting from what they're trying to say.

"It's just like your hairstyle — you have your own voice style." Cairns told Insider. "Use it. It's part of what identifies you. Just don't let it distract from the message."

Listeners reacting to Fleming's viral clip echoed the authenticity-seeking sentiments shared by Brice and Cairns, calling for more regional accents in broadcast news and describing her accent as "so pure and awesome" and "endearing."

"A lot of people are telling me to keep my accent and that newscasters should have regional accents," Fleming told Insider. "I definitely have reconsidered using my regular speaking voice during my broadcasts."