Seemingly Intractable Questions In Pop, No.1 in a Series

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

How do you make pop work on TV?

Comments

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Only play pop that works on TV!

This is a pet topic of mine as regards popstars' image vs their music.

AMAZING TELLY: Avril, Lily, Fergie, Lionel Richie Girls Aloud (when Cheryl is talking). Popstars who have personality/charm and entertainment value, not just 'good songs'. You can hear music anywhere. You can only SEE it on youtube telly (at least, if you're not sure where online to look).

AWFUL TELLY: Bands with guitars who insist on playing 'live'. It's going to sound terrible! Why are you even bothering? Dudes might as well buy your CD and listen to it performed right, or go to a gig where the technical errors are not so obvious. Also, Sophie Ellis Bextor giraffing about. And popstars that are clearly so exhausted from a worldwide promotional tour they can barely keep their eyes open whilst talking to the interviewer.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

your erased youtube brings us to a related key point:

youtube is stuff you go to find (PULL) or have PUSHed at you by people you know. telly is like flyers - stuff thrown out (PUSH again) by distanced/gatekeeper/strangers in the hope that it sticks with someone.

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

point being (grr post too soon) that viewers would rather look elsewhere and 'the talent/management' have more control if they put stuff out without that middleman.

so all telly can do between artists and public is publicity = "entertainment news" spots.

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

The Freeview technique seems to work pretty well: wall to wall videos with sarky graphics interspursed with adverts for mobile phone ring tones and dodgy eurobands. I watch these channels more than anything else.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Me too. I love Hits!TV and TMF (when TMF is actually playing music). I was watching it yesterday afternoon and realised that 1) even on ballads Avril is AN UTTER MENTAL and is totally amazing 2) Enrique Iglesias is still grebt 3) the trajectory of the Rihanna video is inversely proportional to that of the song (ie the former getting MORE RUB whilst the latter is STILL IMPROVING).

[ninebelow.livejournal.com]

Enrique Iglesias is still grebt

I have two problems with this video:

1) His face always lookss like the last peach in Tesco
2) The "parody" director conceit blows my irony meter

The Rihanna video should be utterly broken, it looks like it was put together by rolling a dice, but somehow it works. And am I right in think it does a fadeout just liek the song? The key to their mutual success!

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

You put it over an advert. How many songs have become hits because they've appeared in adverts? (That's a rhetorical question, rather than an invitation to start listing songs.)

Srsly, I don't think pop does work on TV, but then I don't think TV works any more. Why would I watch a TV show containing half an hour of music that I may or may not like, when instead, I can spend the half hour creating my own half hour music show online by watching video clips of my choosing? Exclusive content is the answer, but since no-one has yet developed a way to prevent TV items from appearing online, there is no real solution to this problem.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I disagree here. Where telly comes in is giving popstars the opportunity to tell us there's more to them than this bunch of noises, which may/may not affect how much I like those noises and thence my inclination to give them some money.

I watch Popworld* not because I want to hear new music, but because I want to see popstars doing ridiculous things in order to plug their new single, e.g. the inspired Pop A Cap On Yo Ass, where Brian Harvey or someone had to pin a hat on a picture of a donkey...

*Only I have stopped watching Popworld in the last 2 months because a) the telly is no longer in the same room as the bed b) it's increasingly full of rubbish personality-free buskers eg The View, in whom I have no interest.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

I should point out that I have completely stopped watching TV*. My viewing now consists of:

- YouTube and equivalent videos
- Downloaded TV shows of my choosing
- An occasional burst of Joost channel hopping
- DVDs

If I see something in the schedules that I would be interested in watching, more often than not I'm too busy to watch it at the time that it's on. But I can download it and watch at my leisure.

*

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Televise live gigs and concerts! This will make for an awful lot of music TV which is not to my taste but it'd be successful on the same basis that live sport on TV is successful - if the point of the product is the live feel, the one-off feel, then it's not going to be available anywhere else really. And there's a guaranteed audience of that particular act's fanbase. It works for classical concerts, and that stupid Diana thing proved that it works even for really incoherent pop line-ups.

Ugh, I really hate TV though, I am not the best person to ask. I wouldn't watch music on TV at all.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

The only problem with putting live music on telly is that IT SOUNDS AWFUL. Even the tightest musicians sounded ropey playing live on Top of the Pops - your telly might have surround sound or whatever but the sound engineers at live gigs or festivals are making sure it sounds good for the crowd THERE, not you at home. Live vocals can work fine against a backing tape though, there's fewer variables to get wrong.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

+interviews and stuff BUT THEN PLAY THE WHOLE DAMN SONG AFTERWARDS RATHER THAN TINY CLIPS GRR!
+editing so that the shit stuff doesn't make it onto the telly
which means +budget so that can afford to do a lot; this sort of show used to be quite cheap but basically if you want it to succeed these days I'm pretty sure it's gotta be fairly blank chequed
+decent presenters actually interested in music as in, people who buy CDs rather than knobs who want to take the piss out of music; there is a ratio of genuine interest to knobbishness of course but the show needs to be FOR THE NERDS in order to have any audience because most people would rather watch TMF really innit

-'OMG WE ARE SO FAR OUT KEWL CUS WE'RE A BIT IRONIC ABOUT POP MUSIC' I loved Popworld during its heyday but Alexa what's-her-face was basically the epitomy of everything that is bad about pop music
-replacing it with Big Brother for four months of the year E4 MUSIC I AM LOOKING AT YOU.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

'everything that is bad about pop music on tv' is what I meant in first - point.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

most people would rather watch TMF

Really? What makes you say that? Or are you saying that most people THAT YOU KNOW would rather watch TMF? I know that whenever I've seen TMF, I've been bored after about 10 minutes max, and that's assuming that within those first 10 minutes, they haven't played anything that I dislike enough to change the channel. Same goes for all dedicated music television in my opinion. Dedicated music TV only works as "background" TV. I doubt many people would have a conversation such as:

What are you doing tonight? Fancy coming to the pub?
Nah, I'm staying in to watch an hour or two of TMF

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I agree with the whole song being played - I have a short attention span, and if they play the best bit then I will be motivated to seek out the full version. Playing the entirety of a song is great for Hits!TV and TMF though, I've started mentally noting down all the videos that say 'The End' at the end (ie all the Spice Girls ones)!

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Perhaps this post should have been combined with a poll on a) who watches telly at all b) who watches pop music on telly?

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

music as we listen to it on headphones -- even mp3-level -- is MUCH more "dimensional" than TV itself, let alone TV sound

this is a real problem waiting to be addressed -- or used or exploded up through somehow

a: x factor is a programme about the making of itself (in a fairly dishonest way but even so)
b: classical music -- mozart, haydn etc -- is "music about the making of itself" (what you hear is an exploration of how it's constructed)
c: somewhere in this there a potential of a really strong programme (or genre) which somehow got a. and b. to dramatise one another, and turn the content and the choosing of the content into the subject and the story and the reason to watch (but part of its enquiry wd be the accusation is TV good enuff sound-wise to get this project on on-screen)
d: i am mad

[anatol-merklich.livejournal.com]

b: classical music -- mozart, haydn etc -- is "music about the making of itself" (what you hear is an exploration of how it's constructed)

ok I've been repeatedly ploughing through early Beethoven quartets lately, and this = most excellently correct and fun music insight *ever* right now.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

my music videos TV show (on the internet) project has been scuppered because i have such trouble getting the videos to re-render after i've downloaded them converted them and put them into the 'programme', to the extent where it's just too much trouble to deal with - another dream crushed by the bovver boots of the man machine ;_;

i was pleased with the pilot tho and remain convinced this sort of thing still ought to be on terrestrial tv at some time or other in the day. just having that concentrated filter counts for a lot even tho now you can watch more of what you want when you want to, because the internet still requires better filters and content delivery management based on both 'trust' (in the selecters) and tech wizardry (you give 'them' clues to what you want to hear and they go off and find it and bring it back to you).

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

All videos, all of the time.

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

I often listen to music via headphones with pop video channels on mute.

I enjoyed watching the Pussycat Dolls whilst listening to Machine Head at Live Earth.

Obviously, this makes me a carbon criminal, but I don't drive or fly, so it's okay.

[chezghost.livejournal.com]

your logic is sound, carbon-biased unit (stoked for the primeness)

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

1. Videos - Before I changed cable plans, I used look forward to a "show" on VH1 weekend overnights that played just dance music. This was partially because of the music itself, partially because it was music I didn't know, and partially because the limited broadcast slot (only a few hours a week) virtually guaranteed that there were never repeats. I still believe - much like the old free-form FM fans in US -- that a huge "playlist," if that is the even appropriate word, is the best way to get and retain viewers. I'm not going to tune in because I'm guaranteed to see the new Avril Lavigne within the next 20 songs (esp. now when I can just go to youtube), however i am going to *stay* tuned if i am not constantly seeing things I've seen before (and in fact i may hang around a bit longer *hoping* that i'm tuned in during that one occasion during the day when you play the Avril video. The fact that both radio and tv seem to have consistently moved away from this model suggests that my attitudes are completely different from the average person, but whatever. I still think the idea might be worth reconsideration in the youtube's world of instant gratification.

2. I watched every series of S Club 7 with great pleasure (okay, maybe my attention drifted a bit during the last one in Spain). This included the behind-the-scenes-ish series where they were doing their tour (actually I probably liked that one best of all, because it hinted at the people behind the personae on the shows). I don't know if I'm bored with reality shows because they all feature a) non-entities or b) has-beens (or c) there are too many, too often). But I still think you could draw some kind of audience for something that offers a real-life glimpse of the artists/stars.

3. Hmm.. oh, yes. Two formats that we had here for a while:
- "Earth and Sky" (one hour once a week) featured a "panel" of DJs from radios stations with very different formats (rock, hard rock, europop, russian/oldies pop), an ex-MTV VJ "moderator." Each week a DJ invites a performer to the show. They would alternate live performance and discussion, topics of which ranged from discussion of a particular/song of performance, to the creative process, to the music business, to the life of pop stars, to politics. (And no sitting on couches or anything, the performers were "on stage" guitars or microphones on hand the whole time.) A bit rockist in executiion, perhaps, but always quite interesting, partially because of those moments when you'd get the pop DJ talking about the rock band invited that week, or vice versa.
- The other show was basically a money-spinner of sorts for the channel - imagine an cross between Idol and TOTP - people would "perform" their new songs live (usually singing/synching over tapes) and the viewing audience would call/text votes to determine the "chart" or #1 song for the week.

[mackromackro.livejournal.com]

You make pop work on TV if you follow these steps:

1.Ask yourself "How do I make TV work for my pop?"
2.Ask yourself "*Can* I make TV work for my pop?"
3.Go back to Step #1 until you have two satisfactory and affirmative answers
4.Assembly and modify a project to make your pop work on TV
5.Pitch
6.Shmooz
7.Pray
8.Go back to Step #4 until you made your pop work for TV

[mooxyjoo.livejournal.com]

i used to LOVE to watch 106+park four or five years ago, which must've been when they were at a nice turning point, still some listenable east+west coast stuff coming out, and the south was coming up (and i'm sure there were much better periods to watch, too). it had all KINDS of stuff:

a COUNTDOWN
an AUDIENCE who would introduce themselves, and also sing along and dance (it was v. exciting when they all knew the words to BONECRUSHER)
aj + FREE (swoon)
freestyle competitions
occasional live performance
new videos, as well as classix

i really liked the nightly countdown show on the radio when i was a kid. it was good to feel some of that excitement again as a grownup, with music that i either had just barely heard elsewhere before it made it onto the countdown (usually via early notice on the interweb), or music i had heard plenty because it was doing well on the countdown. and mostly all music that was being touted for its currency, too, that i actually liked. so i was meeting it all on the pop timescale. also, it seemed like it put r+b in a context i could appreciate more readily.

three pop smashes from this period i would hurry home to be able to see every day (even when i had them on my ipod on the way home): 'still tippin', 'breathe', and that xzibit one produced by tim.