MMMM # 474 Three Cheers for Audio

     Over the years, I have worked with TV broadcasters who pay little attention to the audio in a story. As long as the voices were more or less audible, it was fine with them.

     I'm an old radio guy, so I pay more attention to audio...not at the expense of video in TV...but certainly equal to it. A good test of audio quality is to turn away from the video source, or close you eyes, and just listen---really listen--- to the interview. Hollow sounding? Tinny? Is the interviewee's mike positioned badly or it is off and he or she is being recorded through the camera's built in microphone?

FYI, the oldest known audio recording dates to 1878, from Thomas Edison, a recording on aluminum foil "played" via some very new technology. The quality was terrible, but groundbreaking.

     I got thinking about all of this early on Thanksgiving morning when I heard the BBC on radio play an "audioscape" from none other than a resident of Montgomery, Alabama. I did not catch the name, but it was a submission to an online feature of natural sound clips submitted by listeners...in this case, the very Fall sound of a man and his daughter walking in the leaves. When I searched for it, the short clip had not yet been posted on the BBC "Soundscapes" page, but hopefully it will be. There was only one other submission from Alabama....a clip of NASCAR races at Talladega.

Anyone have an on-scene audio clip from the Iron Bowl on Saturday to submit to the BBC? What other sounds are unique to Alabama?

ALSO: How much do you know about the Internet? The PEW folks have posted a short quiz that lets you compare your results to the rest of those who have taken it. Me? Middle of the pack.




AND: Sometimes what the media  do NOT report is as significant as what they do. FOX News was quoting The Washington Times over the weekend in a story comparing the shooting death of University of South Alabama student Gill Collar by a campus security guard a racial event, comparing it to the Ferguson, Missouri shooting. Did I miss something? Was there any indication of a pattern of black campus officers mistreating white students on campus? {Perhaps that is why there was no racial unrest in the Mobile, Alabama incident, while there has been in Ferguson, where the vast majority of police are white and the majority of police stops against black residents.

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular and longtime feature of TimLennox.com]