Tuesday, June 21, 2005
What's That Sound?
Source: The Huffington Post Harry Shearer writes: British TV news is
very, very different from the American product, so much so that CNN's International feed seems to feel the need to ape the Brit style, lest its international viewers be appalled at what real American TV news is like these days.For one thing, look at those teeth. British TV news presenters, being from here, have the local dentition, which is to say, watch this space, a tooth may appear here shortly.
Overall, they don't seem to be hired principally for their looks, which means they can ask questions during live interviews without hitting the Larry King mark--"Johnnie Cochran, Sr., you were what relationship to Johnnie Cochran Jr.?" Even so, another marked difference is that the camera seems about a mile away from the anchors, compared with those close-ups that made Dan Rather look especially frightening. Maybe they're prouder of their sets, maybe it's the teeth.
But the startling difference, one which CNN International apes (so you can see for
yourself on the one hour a day when CNN simulcasts the world feed, noon-1 p.m. ET), is the sound of the newscasts. Or the silence. Somehow, they've figured out a brilliant new technology which allows graphics to come on and off the screen, or the picture to cut to another shot, without a single "whooooosh". No grinding noises, no sounds of onrushing wind past a train window, none of the mechanical and electro-mechanical sounds which accompany every change that occurs on the American cable newscast's screen these days.Of course, the noisefest started in sports television. From ESPN and the NFL, it migrated to the NBA and to Fox News. Now it's everywhere. Except in the rest of the world.
Here's an interesting fact from the memory hole: when the NFL resumed play after 9/11, the first week's telecasts were offered sans sound effects, "out of respect". Nowadays, fellow cable news viewers back in the states,
we don't get no respect.
# posted by ATN @ 3:42 PM 
