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On TV, it happens usually on shows where a lot of issues to be covered later in the show are given shortly at the very beginning. So, before they start with moving into full stories (e.g on the NEWS), they give each of the headlines in a few seconds each and then they start the actual news in details, with full stories. So far so good.

But before they move to the full stories in details, there is usually a short-break. So, the whole process goes like this; EVENING NEWS WITH JAMES (James starts reading the headlines quickly) 1- The man who stole... 2- Unemployment rates have been... 3- The accident on the.... 4- An old lady who was...

(and he finishes by saying) THAT IS AFTER THE BREAK!

So, my question is why does newsman say "THAT IS AFTER THE BREAK", when he listed a lot of stories, not one story. We know that there are a lot of stories to be covered and all of those stories will come one after the other. So, he obviously means ALL OF THOSE STORIES LISTED in the beginning will come after the break.

And, if there are many STORIES to come (which mean plural), why does he not say "THOSE ARE AFTER THE BREAK" or "THESE ARE AFTER THE BREAK!?

Regards,

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  • That's probably an example of conversational deletion, in which the full sentence would be "All that is after the break" or "All of that is after the break."
    – Robusto
    Feb 21, 2018 at 14:02
  • I don't make a habit of watching news, so this may or may not be standard, but it occurs to me that it would make perfect sense if the last thing mentioned is also the first thing to be discussed immediately after the break, in which case the newscaster would be referring to that one story in particular.
    – the-baby-is-you
    Jun 22, 2019 at 18:32

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This is a case of an English learner being able to pick on something that a native English speaker just accepts, rightly or wrongly.

I can actually think of several different permutations of that phrase that are used interchangeably - some would hold up better to this level of grammatical scrutiny than others:

  • That's all after the break.
  • All this and more, after the break.
  • That's coming up after the break.

Some phrases are like colloquialisms, they are not strictly correct contextually but as long as they hold up grammatically in themselves then English speakers tend to just accept them.

It is also possible to argue your phrase in question "That's after the break" IS correct if you take the montage of features as a single thing which the presenter is then commenting on. After all, the many features are all collectively part of the same show, and you would speak of the show in the singular form.

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