Music - It Never Stops

FADE IN

THE PLUSH OFFICE OF AN AD AGENCY CREATIVE TYPE.  NIGHT

Two people are swirling whatever they’re drinking over ice in glasses.  One, Jonah, is shaking his head as he stares at his drink.  Karchy, is slouched back in a recliner, staring at the ceiling.  Karchy groans the dialog out.

                     KARCHY
  Jonah, I just don’t get it.  Every word in that spot
  is perfect.  The visuals are great, there’s a call
  to action, and the inherent drama of the product
  is, well, dammit, it’s smack in your face.  Why
  the hell would it test so poorly. 

 

                     JONAH
  (beat) …and bring the client’s wrath right down on
  the two of us?

 

                     KARCHY
  Exactly.

Their eyes meet and what should have been a return to their original positions turns to a lock on one another.  They hold that pose for a number of seconds.  Then what one would imagine to be am upcoming admission of love for one another brings something else.

                    KARCHY
  It’s (beat) it’s…

Jonah’s realization comes with great force.

                    JONAH
  It’s missing music!  That’s what’s wrong.  We need 
  music!

                                         KARCHY  
                            I thought…

                   JONAH
  Think this.  Think MUSIC.  That’s what’ll SAVE (beat) 

  THIS (beat) SPOT.

OK.  The script you’ve just read is true.  Well, it might be true.  I mean, some of it’s true.  Maybe it didn’t go down exactly like that but if you’ve seen any commercials in the last few months, you know that something like this has taken place in every shop – big or small – representing major and minor (and augmented and diminished) clients across the country.  Everything has to have music under it.  Even the Pre-poo™ toilet spray has music underneath. Wait.  Is that music?

It really isn’t new.  In fact, here’s a story that I can attest to.

Toward the tail of last century.  Chicago.  A creative director in an agency is watching a commercial for a toaster pastry product.  The spot is about as flat as the product.  He looks at the writer, art director, and producer and says, “Get some music underneath it.”

They had me call a Chicago music creator.  Pretty well-known guy.  He comes over and we play the spot a number of times.  As he stands in front of the RP screen in a darkened room you can see the outline of him waving his arm up and down, snapping his fingers.  Then he starts to hum.  “I got it.  I got it.”

Meeting over.  He leaves and calls with a proposed session time.  The creative guys go to the studio and come back with a new track.  Voila.  Music.  Same words.  Much better.  

They play it for the client.  “Air it.”

So they put it on the air.  By the end of the month, two things had happened.  First, the outcall research showed it was still a bust.  But, second, the client got a letter (remember, this was in the snail mail days) asking if they were aware that the music used in the spot was actually a Baptist hymn and what did they think they were doing, subverting/perverting and otherwise verting a sacred song.

Well, there was no need to go to a musicologist.  It was the exact song.  Pull the spot, apologize to letter writer, hang heads.  

But the thing did air with music.  It’s just that the music did nothing.

Now, back to today.  I understand that, apparently, we’re all sad.  We’re depressed. Covid has a bunch of us not working, we’re worried about tomorrow and the day after and on and on.

But I am bothered by all the music in today’s media. I’ll start with commercials.  It seems that every creative director is like the one I mentioned above.  We need feel-good music to “set the mood” for our message.  It’s flat out everywhere.

And what’s the matter with that?  I suppose taken alone, away from anything on either side, the spots may work though I have more on that below.  Mashed together, though, different themes, different keys and rhythms 10, 15 or 30 seconds at a time gets pretty annoying.  It just promotes psychological tuneout.

Give yourself an idea of the problem.  Get a sheet of paper (a what?) and start tracking spots.  Just write the word break and after it put an M or an N for each spot.  M’s are for music, N’s for those with no music.  There’s gonna be a lot of M’s and very few N’s. Go break-by-break.  It isn’t tough.

Keep your ears open; you’ll hear a whole load of spots with music mixed under for no apparent reason.  In so many cases, it has no relationship to the visual or spoken message.  It’s just drivel.  I’m not talking about those that creatively make use of a song with parody lyrics that make sense.  What comes to mind is Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic.  They picked up the refrain from Magic by Pilot and it’s changed to Oh Oh Oh O-zempic.  And, son of a gun.  The song plays right into the minds of most prospects – adults, often older, with diabetes.  Does that not mesh with the 1974 date of the song.  And the subliminal link of “it’s magic” to “Ozempic” is terrific, at least for this old guy.  Same rhythm, same accents, no shoehorning or skipping of beats or pitches.

At the same time, I could list 10 others right off the bat using 60s, 70s or any other pop song with zero tie-in to the product.  In fact, the music probably detracts from the product if the takeaway in the viewers’ minds is the song and not the product.  

And how many oldies get used to sell to teens?  Is it a smart thing?  If they don’t recognize the song, is that good or bad?  The lyrics are changed and if they fit, the listener will never know – but then what’s the value of paying a license fee for something that has no meaning.  On the other hand, I’ve been to a bunch of street fairs¹ and I am amazed at the 21+ crowd singing along with oldies from a cover band.  

Of course, I suppose I could suggest that advertisers courting teens and young adults employ much more recent music but what?  Brian McNight? Three 6 Mafia?  Not a lot written in the last 10 years that’s upbeat, positive, and without some sort of objectionable lyric.

One other point.  Anyone remember this cardinal rule for mixing music:  Never mix a vocal under dialog.  Geez, Len, get your backside into the 21st century.  To which I reply, “Yeah?  Because it’s 2020 that makes it OK?”  That issue is not one of taste.  Nor is it one of creativity.  It has to do with lyrics getting in the way of the message.  

Though you might think that the minds of today can pluck out the message, why would you make them do that.  I did a blog on the wonders of human hearing but when you’re trying to convey information, why put interference in the path.

And a final note.  I’m begging you guys, stop doing board fades in the middle of a phrase.  If you have to do that, maybe time to rethink your talent. 

So the tracks keep comin’ whether their music relates to the product or not.  The tube is teeming with them…no doubt because someone said the spot needed music to sell the product.

Coming up next time (or maybe after that) music in programming.  That’s a fun one.

Dennis Haysbert (R)

Aside:  Hats off to Allstate Insurance – 30 full seconds with zero music, relying on the copy and the authoritative voice of Dennis Haysbert to communicate the message.

¹ For those of you not familiar, a Street Fair is a historic gathering of people, usually with lots of food tents, beer stands, local merchants' tents, and a few pandering politicians.  At the ends of the closed-off street there are bands - yes, live bands, people dancing in the street with no masks and much closer than the six-foot minimum.

NAB 2012

NAB is probably the largest collection of professional gearheads in the world.  The absolute latest, some still prototyped and demonstrated only after the sales engineer bows his/her head in prayer, broadcast goodies emerge there. 

As you would expect, given the continuing convergence of broadcast and “new” media, all those Oreos and sodas are there, too.

Things have changed.  Duh! But this year was especially significant.  It wasn’t a great anniversary like ’06 for quad tape.  No single revolutionary product like Red in 2007.  Instead, it was a year of, well, for me, realization and for the industry, one of maturation.

Here’s my take:

First, I saw hundreds of boxes to do thousands of things.  Convert anything to anything with a BNC in/BNC out black box.  Seriously.  I think I saw one that had ATSC in and black coffee out.  Then, if you look a little further, you find out that a lot of the same things that you buy black boxes for can be done in the digital domain with software.  One case, one processor (or multiple processors) with ins and outs and you don’t need any of the little black boxes at all.  It’s interesting to see which manufacturers are looking at software solutions compared to those looking to sell hardware problem solvers.  

Imaging devices:  Unless I get an assignment that calls for day-in, day-out shooting, I’m gonna rent. It’s changing so fast that you make a commitment, sign the papers, and before delivery, the XV3 is out, replacing the XV2.5 you just bought. 

I will say this – images are just plain gorgeous.  The range of the sensors is so wide (claiming up to 13 f/stops) that they’re presenting new challenges to the receivers/monitors…and working at 20-30 fc of light.  Lenses have caught up with HD and the definition and resolution are terrific.  And it's funny seeing a jib floating around with apparently nothing on it - only to see a DSLR  anchored to the baseplate.

Of course, a couple of things you can’t do anything about – depth of field is depth of field.  HD shortens it and that’s that.  But add a little extra light, get a couple more stops down, and you get your DOF back.  And, speaking of lighting, the LED luminaire is mature.  You can shoot with cool, low power lighting just about anywhere.  [After the fact note:  when you increase the sharpness of the "sharpest" area as with improved lens and sharper sensor, depth of field apparently goes DOWN.  But it depends on what you're viewing it on.  A hi-def image has lots more apparent depth of field when viewed on an NTSC receiver.  That's because the maximum sharpness is much less - so the sharpest image appears less so,, more like the slightly out of focus portions of the image just to either side, in distance from the lens, of the actual focused distance.]

One thing remains the same – the use of lights to control the resultant image.  LED’s don’t eliminate the need for multiple instruments (you can’t dump a bunch of LED’s onto a ceiling and shoot away expecting different results compared to doing the same thing with incandenscents,  fluorescents, or HMI’s).  But whatever you do, it’s a lot cooler and easier.  Hang a two pound panel and you’re shooting f11 at 15 feet – and for 3 hours on a battery.  Awrighty then.

3D.  Don’t sell that flatscreen just yet.  Sony, among others, demonstrated their glasses-less 3D.  This is for large screen.  I’d rather they called it 2.5D.  Nothing really came off the screen at me like when the Creature from the Black Lagoon scared the pants off me in a theater.  And while the gathered crowds oohed and ahhed at first, there was a bunch of sotto voce grumbling as the demo ended.  Same with Dolby’s version.  They suffered some additional problems, a bunch of high-end artifacts that spoiled the motion.  If you have HD with glasses, well, good for you.  Not a lot of programming but you’re an early adopter.  As for glasses-less…wait for the .1 version if you know what I mean.

Workflow:  Nobody wants to sell you just a camera.  Or a switcher or storage by itself, either.  They want you to use their entire system for “workflow”.  It’s the only way to ensure quality.  Well, that’s what they said!  It ain’t true.  If there’s any interface problem, either software or one of those boxes I talked about will solve it.  Speaking of switchers.  Ha!  They’re not.  They’re video program managers capable of controlling multiple feeds with multiple layers (and in multiple languages).  And they’re smart enough to automate a lot of what a TD once did.

Audio:  Both AES and IP audio abound.  In fact, once audio goes into the digital domain – which can be a USB microphone or hard disc audio – it doesn’t have to leave until it reaches the final audio amp or transmitter input.  I saw a guy named Hum out in front of the convention center begging.  He’s pretty well out of business.

An interesting thread was talk regarding the CALM Act and most of the techies laughing at the fact that, once again, trying to pass legislation to control laws of physics doesn’t work.  And speaking of the CALM Act, Rules:  The big concern was text-to-speech in the EAS rules.  Breaths were bated in anticipation of the commission’s announcement that would reinstate the TTS rule that they eliminated in the Fifth Report and Order.  It didn’t happen.  OK.  It did, but they waited until after the event.  None too soon since April 23 is the deadline.

Worth the trip?  Absolutely.  If you have to stay current, you have to make it out there.  I had some assignment and was looking for some particular gear.  Even if I hadn’t, well, it’s still so doggoned much fun just lookin’ at the goodies.

They Say We're Getting More Like Europe

Yeah, I know, every political pundit talks about us becoming more like the UK or the “continent”, good or bad.  But I’m talking about TV.

Some years ago, I was on a panel in Europe about barter television.  The goal was to help European programmers better understand barter program distribution and to realize that just because there is an advertiser attached to a program, it isn’t an indication that that advertiser’s next step is to take over rewriting the network’s newscasts.

One of the big issues that surfaced in Europe was the fact that most commercials were broadcast in long pods during the one commercial break in a half-hour.  That’s two breaks per hour.  That didn’t work so well for barter.  If an advertiser supplied a show for a 50-50 split of the ad time, that would mean running 3 or 4 :30’s in the same singular pod.  You reach and frequency folks might have fun with that but when you work through it, you’ll find it’s not too efficient. 

We wanted to spread out the spots throughout the programming.  I explained how it worked in the US and how barter allowed stations with inventory/avails to take advantage of good programming at “no” cost.

The response was nearly in unison. They had picked up on my word “no” but they said it with an exclamation point after it. Well, SuperChannel (yes, it was that long ago) said yes and we did do some business with what was BskyB but, “no” seemed to be the word of the day, I think they recorded it on their little Norelcos and just played it back when they saw us open our mouths.

In America, we didn’t understand the concept of 4 minute pods.  “Why the h--- would I want to be the 7th commercial in a group of 8 in a long pod,” was the response of an advertiser.  And rightfully so.  In the era before DVR’s, you stood a good chance of getting lost.  Nielsen numbers showed the falloff in viewers during a 2 minute break.  Advertisers shuddered at what a 4 minute break would bring.

OK.  Fade to black.  Fade up on a 2012 scene – maybe a network sales office or one of the few remaining barter syndicators.  Folks are sitting around a table trying to solve the conundrum of adding yet another :30 while keeping viewers tuned in.

Let me digress a second to say that “back then” when the company I was with approached a network with advertiser supplied programming and wanted to insert an extra :15 or :30 beyond the network standard – even though it was the advertiser’s program – all the nets said no (apparently they had Norelcos, too).

OK, McFly, back to today.  Now I am regularly treated with 3 minute breaks.  I see some that are 4 minutes long and even some shows formatted for 5 minutes.  (Sorry stations and networks, but DVR’s not only let folks zip and zap, they let people time breaks with ease.)  I’ve seen longer, but as far as formatted breaks, five minutes, plus one or two station promos, is about where we are.

Now one of the arguments the Europeans used was that commercials interrupt the continuity of the program.  Well, duh squared!  Over here, we were used to it.  And we could keep up. “We’re Americans.  We’re ten and 1!” to paraphrase a film from the past.  I don’t know for sure but maybe those breaks made us smarter or improved our memory compared to Europeans.  I know our economy and GDP were better for most of the time that we had those separate breaks.  Causal relationship?  Could be.

So the Europeans didn’t want to interrupt the story.  Americans rolled with it and culturally, we learned to keep the plot in our collective head.  That was after two, three, or, at most, four thirties.  Now we’re at five minutes.

Anyone remember the story about the two seniors watching TV.  The husband gets up and says, “I’m going for ice cream.” 

The wife responds, “Bring me some.  With chocolate sauce.”

He starts to leave the room and she says, “Write it down.  You’ll forget.”

He replies, “No I won’t.  I’m fine.”

She says, “Well, I want whipped cream on top, too.”

“OK.”

“No, write it down,” she admonishes.  “You’ll forget.”

He marches off and about 5 minutes later (the end of the commercial break?) he comes back and hands her a plate of scrambled eggs.  And she shoves it back at him, responding, “You forgot my damned toast.”

Well, with 5 minute breaks, it’s a lot like that.  It’s getting harder to keep the plot in your mind.  Some networks realize it – they’re running recaps after a long break in a drama, jumping back three or four scenes to get the viewer back into the show.  In other cases, you hope there’s someone else around to answer the, “Wait – is she his daughter?  Was she driving the black SUV?” questions.

Here’s another aspect of the issue:  “Back when” there was blasphemy committed when someone suggested :15’s.  Part of this was brought about when a particular advertiser sought to run :45’s and the networks didn’t know what to do and so demanded that 2 :45’s be piggybacked for 1:30 to keep network traffic folks out of the rest home.  Then came the :45/:15 piggyback so that minutes could be bought.  Then came the standalone :15’s. 

With them came a limit of the number of :15’s per pod.  After all, 8 in a two-minute break was just too much to take. 

Ah, but, apparently we’ve adapted.  Today, with a 5 minute break, :15’s are usually limited but we may see six or eight scattered about in that four or five minutes.  It’s funny – zipping through them, setups fly past to the point where the screen strobes like a disco on Donna Summers night.

Now, about that limiting thing.  Advertisers and networks both are sensitive to the clutter.  The advertisers may tolerate it because it keeps cost down (Remember, this is one of the few businesses where, when viewership goes down, rates go up because of supply and demand) and networks want to at least appear to be controlling clutter to somehow mitigate the tuneouts and zippers. 

Together – or separately – the advertisers and networks/stations have figured out that they can reduce clutter by airing not-so-short form commercials.  Some are the two-minute infomercials.  Others are even longer, produced as, can I call them “spots with stories?”  They can burn off two, three, even four minutes.  It solves the clutter but, at the same time, it introduces an entirely new storyline that takes the place of that drama you were watching.  Makes that recap a good thing because some folks' memory can’t go back four minutes.  Probably the aspartame.

But no matter how you slice it, we’ve gone European on steroids.  Not only do we have a five-minute break in a program, we have more than one.  And sometimes, we’re greeted with a three- or four-minute break, a sweeper, breakbumper or breakfiller with show title and maybe theme music (or the closed captioning disclaimer) and right into three or four minutes of local spots.

Meanwhile, Europe – UK, at least – pretty much maintains its two breaks per hour with a total of about 8 minutes (primetime) of non-program time.  Wait, maybe it’s like the pound and you have to multiply 8 minutes by the exchange rate.  8 x 1.5 = 12 minutes…no, that can’t be right.  So they’re at about half what we’re wading through.  France’ll get you maybe 9 minutes depending on the daypart, but only one commercial break if the program runs less than an hour.

So, back here, is there a chance for reduction of commercial time in the US?  Well, lots of stations and networks have tried it.  Years ago, the now-defunct Avco Broadcasting Company cut two minutes per hour from its commercial load thinking that the better environment would be more attractive to advertisers.  That didn’t work. The occasional “without commercial interruption” doesn’t seem to move the viewership needle on the ratings side so might as well run the spots and make some dough.

What’s really fun is seeing syndicated fare running in a local market.  You can tell how successful the sales team is – or isn’t – by the number of PSA’s that run in the preformatted long breaks.  Of course, sometimes that’s the syndicator’s sales team but usually a syndicator will run makegoods for underdelivery in that or another show.

And as it all continues, we manage to make it through, even when we let the flat-screen play, muted while we make a five-minute call.  My favorite is to watch a show live but switch to a DVR-ed show during the commercial breaks.  Don’t laugh.  I have the formats pretty well memorized for a lot of shows and it’s easy.  With the DVR-ed shows, once you know the format, all you have to do is count the “skip forwards”, :30 at a time. 

In all fairness, I do watch commercials – ones that interest me, as it’s supposed to be.  In a world of individual targeting, that’s all I’d be getting.  But it’s not the case here so I keep that remote at hand.  Way I figure it, I save myself a half-hour or more a day.  Cool. 

That’s more time to watch as commercial loads increase. 

Are we becoming more like Europe?  We blew past Europe and are speeding toward Barnum&Baileyville.  Maybe we’re all heading for E. B. White’s world of IRTNOG – the whole show gets condensed to one word. A cast member says it and we have 29:30 of spots. 

Say, did you hear the one about the prisoners who just numbered their jokes…

The Great Sponsor Reveal...

Well, I just invested fifty-eight seconds in a spot…to finally see the name of the advertiser.

Why did I stick around till the end when 99 percent of the time I just zip past or change channels?  Because it jogged my mind – that I wanted to write this installment of DC to White Light.

It starts with one or two people in an agency “creative” group.  One thinks (or says to the other) “Let’s create some mystery.  Let’s tell a story and let folks try to figure out what it’s about.”

“Yeah,” he/she thinks or hears back from his/her creative partner, “we get this story line going about [place product here] and no one can figure it out till the end and we super the name and fade out.”

Then he/she suggests that the thing be done without ever revealing the sponsor, ignorant of 317 of the CFR and 73.1212 of the FCC rules, “It’s a tease.  We run it for awhile then finally we air the version with the sponsor payoff,” but settles for that closing reveal in each spot.

He/she/they take it up the creative the ladder, through legal, to the client – who has to be talked out of the logo being up for the entire spot – out to production and onto the air.  And what’s important to them?  The reveal.  It’s like they’re the first ones to think of it.

Get a creative life, will you?  Said another way, just how narcissistic are you or your client to think that 99.999% of the world actually cares enough about the connection you’re trying to make between Iowa-raised corn and your cereal to stick around, watch the end and muse to themselves, “Wow, I never realized that.”

I’m not suggesting that these folks are trying to HIDE the sponsor name altogether. They’re not out there pitching a POV or concept without being discovered.  I have a “warm spot” for those guys, but it’s not of this world.  The folks I’m talking about are just trying to be cute.  Inventive.  As if doing something that’s been done tens of times before is inventive. 

“Not with this product.  This is a first.”

One more time with the narcissism.  Very few people care.  If you want to sell something, be upfront about it and show me how that product is a hero.  How does it make my life better.  I’ll buy it.  But if you’re playin’ hide the logo with me, well, guess what…the zip button gets punched and I’ll never even see what the product is.  That’s a tough one to explain to a client.

It’s a zip/zap age.  And people are in a hurry.  Want to use that surprise reveal technique?  Do it as a ten second preroll online.  Ask a question or show a situation then show me the product as the answer.  Your answer will beat me to the “skip” button and I’ll get your message.  Make it :15 and I’ll bet I’m faster on the draw with the remote than you are with your reveal.

And one final thing:  When it does work, it only works once.

“Dummy.  That’s what we want.  The second time someone sees it, they automatically recall the sponsor.”

I don’t think so.  You may find some of that but you’ll find more zippers and skippers than recallers.

One last time.  As an appeal.  Show me the product solving a problem for me.  Don’t hide its name.  I’m in.

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