Stop the Stupidmusic Already!

I have noticed something aurally annoying on my local NPR station (WUOT, Knoxville, Tennessee): as the local news announcer is giving news headlines or describing upcoming programs, a musical background is playing behind him or her. This was done in the past as well, but back then the music was very muted and the announcer could clearly be heard over it. Now, however, the music is often so loud as to compete with the announcing and it even overpowers the voice.

I have normal hearing even at my age and I seldom have to ask anybody to repeat what he has said. But I often have trouble making out what the local NPR announcer is saying when the background is so loud. I suspect that many people have this problem.

Why on earth would the background be so jacked up? Does the sound engineer fancy himself a DJ, or is this one of those nutty corporate decisions designed to lure younger listeners? I would bet that NPR has few younger listeners to be attracted, while the older, established listeners are being turned off by this practice.

Lately the national NPR segments sometimes also have loud musical backgrounds and even some of the national and local television news occasionally have them. So loud, obtrusive backgrounds seem to be a trend across the country.

We are not talking about classical music. Once in a while the background is indeed classical, but even then the way-front-and-center sawing of all those violins and the pounding of the timpanis is overwhelming to the ear. But most often, the background is what I call contemporary crap, with the bass and the drums amped up. Since the announcer is most often male and has a lower-register voice, the heavy low sounds are even more likely to drown him out. My husband is really ticked off about this because he has a hearing loss in the higher range and depends on what he can hear in the lower range in order to make out what is said.

I call the pointless/meaningless/useless background music “Stupidmusic” (all one word, with the accent on the first syllable). I hope that the station managements will soon wake up and smell the coffee: nobody outside of the show people thinks that having a rah-rah background is stylish and most often it just gets in the way of the listener’s comprehension of the news. Which, if you think about it, is the whole point of having a news program in the first place.