Listening to NPR often leads now, unfortunately, to just shutting it off. All the distracting music thumping and wailing in the background of interviews and commentaries is annoying. Meniere's Disease and bouts of fibromyalgia are tough enough for this long-suffering listener. Add those frustrating so-called soundtracks do their best to turn this debilitated sufferer into an impersonation of Edvard Munch's "Scream".Still awful to the memory is a recent morning of listening to This American Life, wanting to give undivided attention to their "Nice Work if You Can Get It" episode. Made it through the early moments of interviews and chats with astronauts, then couldn't continue. All the intrusive overlay and underflow of music made the segment annoyingly unlistenable.
Dear Mr. NPR Segment Producer, good interviews and interviewers do not need Canto, soundtrack, and musical fluffing. Good verbal content hardly if ever requires the crutches of a melody. It works in movies, while the eyes work through the scenes. It annoys on serious radio and tarnishes the listening experience.
Think John F. Kennedy's "Ask Not" speech. (Ah, if only it had a soundtrack, you think?)
Think Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream". (Needed dreamy piano riffs, you say?)
NPR's All Things Considered a few Augusts back paid birthday wishes to Daniel Schorr. Quite a worthy and newsworthy milestone for a media legend. The happy-birthday segment launched with a beautifully streaming birthday melody that was dragged farther and farther, grinding out all over the segment, clobbering words and drowning sentences of good sentiment, vying for equal time with the sage comments Mr. Schorr brought to the occasion. SCREAM!!
Much like the fool on a hill who sits unheard and sees the world spinning 'round, this blog may never get the attention of whoever makes the big decisions at NPR. But someone should say to that NPR big-decision-maker...no...SCREAM into the ear of that big decision maker:
“PLEASE…PLEASE…PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT INSTEAD OF ENHANCING THE NARRATIVE, ACCOMPANYING MUSIC IRRITATES THE ATTENTION, THE SAME WAY TALKING IS INTRUSIVE AND RUDE WHEN ONE WANTS ONLY TO HEAR A MELODY.”
And while screaming this complaint into the NPR big-decision-maker’s ear, it should be accompanied with a distracting soundtrack roaring or whistling or chanting or throbbing annoyingly in the background. Just see how the NPR big-decision-maker likes that.
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