Jamaica Inn - Who's to blame?

my mum has bought a sound bar for her TV. One of those expensive narrow speaker things from Bose.  She says she has real problems understanding some of the #BBC shows she watches.  She is not alone over 2,000 people have complained about the poor sound quality of 'Jamaica Inn'  It does not help that none of the actors seem capable of opening their mouths on this drama. 

I call it the 'attack of the whispering actors' in the good old days of boom microphones, the actors er, had to boom.  Now we have those clever little radio mics you can Sellotape to an actors body. The good thing is that now dialogue can sound more natural and the performance more intimate. 

Intimacy is something I teach in my courses at The London Academy of Media, but I also teach that by all means give the intimate performance but make sure there is clarity. Mumbling like Marlon Brando with toothache in a dodgy west country accent lacks that clarity. 

Some have blamed the Sound Engineer and there is an element of truth there.  Fantastic as Dolby surround home cinema sound is, most people, including my mum, listen off the crappy speakers on their TV and the stereo mix on some shows means that dialogue is swamped by the music, this means that the mix should work on the crappiest of speakers.  I often check my students work on my iPhone, it is the ultimate acid test to see if their performance cuts through and my production does the same but does not drown their performance.

Equally I would hate all the actors to turn in an r.p. performance with the odd 'ooo arrrrrr' thrown in for good measure so the answer is clarity of performance and checking the quality of the sound production on the poorest form of carriage (a smart phone) and the BBC might not have lost 1.6 million viewers between episodes, and much more importantly my mum would not have to spend her pension money on expensive sound equipment. 

Master The Social Network

it's easy, engage, be real and don't take it too seriously.  According to Michael Lebowitz founder and CEO of 'Big Spaceship' corporations make 5 mistakes:

Mistake 1
Faceless corporations do not have a sense of humour, they are not good at funny.  Or worse they get it badly wrong like Durex South Africa who allowed a tweet joking about female sexual violation to be sent out … oh dear, oh dear.

Mistake 2
They are too slow to respond.  In a world of instant gratification social media demands an instant response. Journalist Robert Jordan from Forbes gives the brilliant example of those pesky 'Tamagotchi' virtual alien pets that you HAD to feed and water, or they died. That's just like social media.

Mistake 3
Companies have no voice.  They are politically correct and inoffensive like a BBC Local radio phone-in.  Social media demands that your company has a voice.  Have fun, visualise and engage with your customer.

Mistake 4
They are nameless and faceless.  When a customer @yourcompany do they actually become part of a dialogue or are they just sending their @ into a virtual void? Be human and be polite - reply and engage.

Mistake 5
Companies try to reduce everything to a process and that includes social media.  You just can't do that, social media is a living breathing organism that you nurture and form a relationship with.

listener-centric

 the best way to create powerful compelling radio is to move yourself away from the cosy air-conditioned radio studio and become listener-centric. What do they (the listener) want?  What would give them the very best listening experience? How can you as a broadcaster or station boss give the listener more than he or she expected to hear and how can you deliver it using all the different carriage at your disposal.  (By that I mean your broadcast service, podcasting, visualisation and social media, etc.)

If you are an Amazon employee some of this sounds remarkably familiar. Love, tolerate or loathe  Amazon - it is a very effective global company.  Their corporate mantra is to be customer-centric and it has made them a very successful business that may not be particularly profitable - as again their mantra is to re-invest profits into growing the company ever bigger at the discomfort sometimes of government and individual.

Too many radio stations seem to put their listener at the end of the chain, rather than at the front. The BBC has traditionally given listeners what they think might be best for them, a Reithian ideal wrapped up in their charter and put into practice by 'a bunch of Oxbridge lefties who have never done a decent days work' to paraphrase a well know Daily newspaper.

So here in the UK if you are a commercial broadcaster you have a unique opportunity to be listener-centric and duck and dive around the BBC who have a habit of talking-down to the Great British public. Whereas you can fulfil need by offering a more direct experience.  I am not talking about 'dumbing-down' - after Producing more than 16,000 hours of talk radio I have witnessed first-hand (or ear) that some of the most euridite thinkers have had life-experience rather than academic achievement.

So let's take some of Amazon's best ideas and put the listener first.

Peter Sellers

 

was a mad c•nt so former Goon Michael Bentine told me when I asked him what Sellers was like to work with.  I also asked how Sellers managed to master his many voices, from his French Clouseau the very un P.C. Indian voice through to his Austrian sounding Dr Stangelove?

Bentine said that Sellers secret was that he had bought one of the very first tape-recorders available to domestic consumers.  They (The Goons)  would all practice their character voices by recording and then playing back the result.  In the 1950s this was cutting edge. Now everyone has a high quality recorder in their pocket in the form of a smartphone, of course you still need the incredible talent that Peter Sellers had to create those voices, but now we can all practice.