Noises off and kill the Muzak

Noises Off—Stop the Muzak

I watch very little television these days simply because there’s virtually nothing worthwhile to be seen. That being said, I have observed an unfortunate trend taking place over the last three or four years—producers of television programming now seem to have an unfortunate tendency to fill every bit of silence with noise.

I love to watch Paula Deen’s show, both to hear her talk and to watch what she does in her kitchen. Her southern accent and occasional lapse from good to questionable grammar can be charming. This is true, even though I now know that much of the above is an act.

Unfortunately, it’s getting hard to watch and listen because every time she pauses we hear the ‘plunk, plunk, strum, strum, tinkle, tinkle, and occasional tootle, tootle’ of musical sounds. This is not actual music, in that it becomes any sort of tune, rather it is simply musical instruments of some sort being aggressed upon to no discernible purpose.

For example, on a recent program, we heard:

Paula: “Hey, y’all, welcome to my kitchen. Today, we’re gonna be making my Grandmother Paul’s biscuits. They’re a family favorite, and I know y’all are gonna love them.”

Strum, strum, tinkle, tinkle, plunk, plunk.

Paula: “But first, I seem to be out of bacon grease. Us Southern gals can’t cook anything without bacon grease, so I’m gonna create some by frying up a mess of bacon.”

Places slices of bacon in a frying pan.

Paula: “Listen to that. I just love the sound of bacon frying, don’t you?”

Camera focuses on bacon in pan.

Strum, strum, tinkle, tinkle, plunk, plunk.

(Gee, Paula, we’d love to hear it, but because of that annoying strumming and plunking, we can’t.)

Even the Home and Garden channel has been infected with this problem. In a recent show where a couple were looking at beach property in Central America, we were told that the nearby ocean could be heard from the patio, but when the camera zoomed in on the surf, all we could hear was Strum, strum, tinkle, tinkle, plunk, plunk.

The phenomenon is everywhere. During a recent program which involved touring a factory, with every close-up shot of conveyors and machinery, the hum of the equipment was very nearly drowned out by a near-constant barrage of Strum, strum, tinkle, tinkle, plunk, plunk, with an occasional tootle, tootle thrown in for good measure.

The phenomenon has infected Mike Holmes programs as well, adding annoying bits of musical noise all over the place.

Some network programs are even worse. NCIS, for example, is a fairly interesting program, but very nearly every action scene, and some non-action scenes, are ruined by the near-constant presence of loud and obnoxious music relentlessly pounding away.

To give credit where it is due, some producers seem to have the good sense to at least keep the Muzak down to reasonable levels. The Closer, is a pretty good example of this, in that the background music is usually quite subdued.

And yes, movie soundtracks have always included music, but it was actual music, usually especially composed for the occasion and, for the most part, it tended to enhance the experience. What we hear on television is, generally speaking, not even music—at least not in the sense that it contains actual tunes. It’s mostly just noise. And the noise enhances nothing. It does not add anything to the experience—instead, it detracts almost to the point of distraction.