Score one for music with a live performance
The word “soundtrack” activated the trigger.
From habit and professional curiosity I watch a lot of local newscasts. Most segments are routine and cookie-cutter. They barely rate, let alone register, a reaction.
Does the cliché “same old, same old” ring a familiar note?
I do snap to attention when something remarkable in either direction happens. Listening to Channel 29’s Lucy Noland manage the patter between stories on her station’s 10 p.m. elicits appreciation. Seeing the smarts behind the ease of Channel 6’s Adam Joseph does the same. Or the natural congeniality of Channel 3’s Ukee Washington.
Individuals, more than entire shows or even stories, make watching worthwhile. (I need you to know that the word I resisted to end that last sentence is “tolerable.”)
Then there’s the urge to grimace.
That comes when anchors or reporters talk to people about subjects that take some knowledge in which they are not particularly versed.
Cringes are most rife when an interview takes place with people in entertainment or the arts.
Sometimes I wonder how I survive them. Thank goodness rolling eyes are not fatal.
Which brings me to the potential lethal use of that word, “soundtrack.”
It was uttered by one of my favorite local newscasters while she asked a question about live music in a play.
Live music is not a “soundtrack.” Just as theater is not a medium.
It is played and heard on the spot by a band that is present for the occasion. The compositions heard in a musical make up its score. Individual pieces are numbers or songs. A soundtrack means something was pre-recorded, as for a movie or television show. It’s the audio that accompanies and is blended with pictures to make an entire product. A score is performed in front of a live audience as is immediate.
OK, I’m getting a little pedantic. Maybe even a tad petty.
Even so, distinctions are important. Not knowing the difference shows the ignorance of the commentator and misinforms the viewer.
The mistake rankled because it’s so typical for news programs when anything cultural is broached.
While I’m grateful local stations mention local plays, concerts, and dance programs at all – at one time they didn’t – I would like to see entertainment covered with the same excitement, enthusiasm and perception as sports receives.
A sports fan would immediately catch a reporter in a gaffe. Commentators would get their terminology right and make sure they asked questions that had some meat and real interest in them.
In about eight recent interviews I’ve seen with cast members of local productions, the questioning has been perfunctory and barely in tune with the subject matter or the people who are speaking.
The interview with the “soundtrack” incident is a case in point.
The people being interviewed were bona fide Broadway veterans, one a Tony Award winner whose name on a marquee sparks extra interest and who is known beyond Broadway for her work on “Desperate Housewives” and other television programs.
That actress received no recognition for her laudable body of work. How could she? It was obvious the interviewer had no idea who she was beyond a representative of a musical appearing at a local theater.
The viewer may have been interested that a person of such renown was performing live within hitting distance of where he or she lives.
Expertise is missing. So is the sense that this feature story in important.
In fact, the interviews don’t come off as stories. They come off as public services pieces, segments included in the newscast for mild change of pace or to please a public relations person.
I don’t want to discourage the booking and interviewing of actors involved in local production. I welcome the station acquainting its audience with the wealth the Philadelphia area offers residents and visitors when it comes to the performing arts. Its theaters, dance companies, and music ensembles are first-class and can compete with counterparts anywhere in the world. They deserve exposure, especially from local newscasts.
I would like to see some care taken by the reporter in preparing for interviews about the arts. Mostly, you get newscasters that gush or keep all basic and innocuous.
The same happens in restaurant reviews.
Did you ever hear a negative one?
Doesn’t the person doing the eating always wax ecstatic and end with “Mmm, that was good?”
One of the reasons I admire Channel 3’s Vittoria Woodill is she makes me believe she is enjoying herself when she says she is and that she has some discrimination, i.e. that she did a test run, before she agrees to do a story.
That may not be true. Tori may be as public relations-influenced as most reporters look, but I like watching her spots because she is among the few in history, and certainly currently, who seems to have taste when she talks about “taste.”
Discrimination should be imperative when a reporter, host, or program in general presents spots about fashions and stores.
One recent horror had a local host sporting dressy, yet casual, clothes from a local store. The clothes all had rips and tears that might be fashionable today but that made the garments look trashy, or like they’d been caught in a lawn mower, and not one with recently sharpened blades. Instead of praising them as “cool” and gushing over them, I expected the host to say, “I wouldn’t wear any of this to take out the garbage, let alone to go clubbing in.”
Sure, no one has to share my taste, which is preppy and more interested in tailoring than style. But ugly is ugly. More to the point, hideous is hideous, and producers should be aware of that before they book a spot.
Of course, it might be that producers actually scout the local scene and present stories and products they about which they want their viewers to know. But I doubt that happens a lot, and I can’t imagine a producer who saw the clothing to which I’m referring agreeing to promote it.
Knowledge, care, and uncovering real interest should be the hallmark and purpose of any stories.
My thrill at seeing the cultural scene covered at all is mitigated by the shoddy way it’s done.
Even movies are talked about more in terms of their box office grosses than about the quality of an individual film.
The segments I’ve mentioned are, in general, not up to standards. I’ve been polite by keeping the names of the guilty to myself and addressing the malaise instead of the perpetrators.
That’s because I think all can be better if some care was taken to find out more about content of shows and the status of performers before they appear on a live set to be interviewed.
Nothing I’ve seen is quite as bad as my favorite example of lazy interviewing, a bygone local reporter talking to Lauren Bacall and praising one of the actress’s performances only to have Ms. Bacall tactfully retort, “Did you like it that much, dear? I’ll have to pass that on to Lee Remick next time I see her since she was the one in that movie.”
Some spots come close.
Ah, I wish everything was covered like sports and weather are. They tend to be the only subjects that receive the care and expertise all stories should have.
New Comcast destination
Most holiday seasons, I take time to visit the Comcast Center to see the Christmas show.
This year, I have another destination.
It’s the new Comcast Building, the one that now houses Channel 10 and its broadcasts.
Several Channel 10 anchors and reporters have mentioned how much they enjoy being in their recently occupied high-rise studios. Weather anchors have been particularly pleased with a picture window that allows them to look out at the skies, something the vacated, windowless City Line headquarters prohibited. (The only window in the interior was in a radio studio and put there so morning weather anchors could verify it was raining or snowing if they’re wire report said it was.)
WCAU-TV moving to the Comcast Building is particularly significant. Its former building was revolutionary in its time because it was the first to conceive of a broadcast outlet in terms of horizontal space.