Intercultural Communication: Speaking with Multiple-

Language Audiences; Media Skills: Podcasting [LO-5], Chapter 7 Your company was one of the fi rst to use podcasting as a business communication tool. Executives frequently record messages (such as monthly sales summaries)

and post them on the company’s intranet site; employees from the 14 offi ces in Europe, Asia, and North America then download the fi les to their music players or other devices and listen to the messages while riding the train to work, eating lunch at their desks, and so on. Your boss asks you to draft the opening statement for a podcast that will announce a revenue drop caused by intensive competitive pressure. She reviews your script and hands it back with a gentle explanation that it needs to be revised for international listeners. Improve the following statement in as many ways as you can:

Howdy, comrades. Shouldn’t surprise anyone that we took a beating this year, given the insane pricing moves our knucklehead competitors have been making. I mean, how those clowns can keep turning a profi t is beyond me, what with steel costs still going through the roof and labor costs heating up—even in countries where everybody goes to fi nd cheap labor—and hazardous waste disposal regs adding to operating costs, too.