THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 15, 1995 TAG: 9507140024
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A13 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: George Hebert
LENGTH: Medium: 52 lines
Listeners and watchers already have had a lot of angry things to say about the way the sound volume on the TV sometimes ratchets up for the telecasting of commercials.
It hasn't mattered much whether the eardrum assault was a technological shift from an audio level engineered in one setting (for the main program) to an ad segment of different origin, or whether the booming was a deliberate ploy to grab attention. The result has been infuriating either way.
However, this isn't the only source of television loudness that deserves muffling.
High in the category of TV noise that annoys, for example, is the commercial in which a sustained, excruciating blast of sound is created, not by electronics, but by revved-up vocal cords. Typically, the pitch-person strolls through a display of products, or amongst clever advertising graphics, proclaiming at the top of his or her lungs the reasons we should buy this or that, telling us how soon and warning how much we will lose if we don't.
Unhappily - and foolishly from the standpoint of anyone who really wants to sell us something - this kind of rapid-fire, circus-barker hustling delivers more decibels than persuasion. The user of the screech technique is lost in time. Today's television audience is no milling crowd outside the side-show tent. Our intelligence is being insulted and our nerves unnecessarily rattled. Worst of all is the repeated broadcast of the very same head-pounding spiel.
Yet another irksome type of vocal overkill on TV lies outside the commercial segments. For there are many offenders among the emcees of entertainment programs and reporters who give on-scene descriptions of various events. Many of these harbor the notion that if there is excitement and hubbub around them, say in a gathering or at a sports event, they are obliged to raise their voices to extreme levels.
If this is done to convey a sense of how tumultuous things are out there on the scene, we can understand. But the shrill voice is still a trial. Even harder to accept is the shouting that some reporters and announcers routinely employ in the apparent belief that they need to out-yell the commotion around them. Actually, the background hubbub doesn't come through to us as loudly as they seem to think.
Maybe we can put it this way: In the TV ads and around them, fewer strained voices would mean more of us listening out here - and fewer of us straining to escape. MEMO: Mr. Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star.
by CNB