Creative geniuses can’t resist exploiting digital gadgets on TV shows
With every advance in technology, there are negative side effects. We are living in the age of modern communication, driven by technology such as super fast computers.
Digital images are transmitted thousands of miles instantly. Satellites revolve in space around the Earth, beaming electronic signals down to our homes and businesses day and night.
Most of this is great. We can send and receive information almost instantly on the Internet.
We have 500 channels on TV. Information on health, medicine, cars, clothes, whatever we need, can be retrieved at the click of a mouse.
There is a negative side. Hundreds of junk e-mails. Every day. At work and at home. With cell phones, computers, fax machines and beepers, you can’t get a break from work. Even at home, on the golf course or at the movies, the gadgets will track you down like a browbeat dog.
Some overly creative people can’t resist exploiting technology.
Surround sound in the movie theaters is one of those abuses. When your seat begins to vibrate from a booming blast through an overhead speaker and two from the walls, that’s a tad bit too much.
One of the more annoying but subtle changes involves professional football games on TV.
In switching through the network channels I have concluded CBS is the worst offender. During a game there will be dozens of flashy, bright, irritating graphics. It’s like watching a Fourth of July fireworks display.
Over the years the technology of broadcasting the game really didn’t change all that much. But with the digital TV age upon us, it changed tremendously.
You are tortured by a succession of annoying, loud graphics, one after another. Before every play. After every play. A starburst graphic with those really annoying, loud sound effects. It sounds and looks like a Star Wars movie.
For every 10 minutes of a football game broadcast, I bet there’s at least five full minutes of digital graphics.
To make it worse, some of the networks superimpose entire boxes of graphics along the bottom, top and on the side of the TV screen. All with loud, irritating beeps, bongs and musical notes.
It’s all about hype, I guess. If it’s a dull football game, or a newscast even, the thinking of the creative geniuses is to supercharge it with flashy graphics which zoom in and out of the screen, accompanied of course by loud zips and zap sound effects.
At some point, the system is going to overload. You’re going to tune in a football game on TV and you will never even see players who will be lost behind all the boxes, graphics, flashes, exploding starbursts, rockets, explosions, whistles and beeps.
Promos rank second as the most annoying impact of modern communications. While we might have access to 500 TV channels, the amount of junk being aired is enormous.
TV spots promote upcoming shows, or tomorrow’s schedule, or the weekend specials. Over and over. Each one with starbursts, bells, whistles and exploding rockets.
Unfortunately for the TV whiz kids and their digital gadgets, a boring football game or another mindless sitcom cannot be improved by flashy graphics.
Junk is still junk. Boring is still boring.
Even if you turn up the volume.
Mike Ellis is the editor of the Herald-Standard. His e-mail address is: mellis@heraldstandard.com.