Russian TV newsreaders have moved from a didactic to a more conversational mode of discussing news. This shift involves the overall change of mass media language which has become less authoritative in tone. Russian news presenters now read scripts using more casual and conversational patterns of speech largely associated with the English vocal manner. The present research examines the major evolving vocal patterns in modern Russian news reading style. The results are based on perceptive and acoustic analyses of a vast corpus of authentic recordings from Russian TV news programmes. The melodic patterns discussed in this paper concern mainly and primarily the pre-nuclear part of an intonation unit.