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

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

How do you make pop work on TV?

Comments

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, point taken, although from my experience, the format of TV pop music shows has always been 95% artists I've heard of to 5% artists I haven't. I think most people hear new artists on the radio, but don't see new artists on TV until they've already heard of them. When do you ever see unsigned artists on TV? You don't because TV show makers are worried that their viewers will channel hop if an artist comes on that they've not heard of. On radio, the same is true to an extent, which is one of the reasons why radio has daytime playlists.

Are you telling me that Fergie and the like don't have entire teams of image experts advising them? Artists spend ages recording videos, and there's no reason why inventive artists couldn't fit in time for a video shoot to do "something silly" to promote their music.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

> entire teams of image experts advising them

If they don't then they definitely should. A popstar's image makes such a difference to whether I am happy to fork out cash to support said artist or just steal their musics off the interweb er ignore them. That sounds quite shallow but DUDES this is ENTERTAINMENT we're talking about here. I want the full package from my pop.

> When do you ever see unsigned artists on TV?

Rarely, because unsigned artists are usually not on telly FOR A REASON. To make a reasonable impact on telly takes £££-a-plenty. Employing a good plugger for a start: £10k for 3-4 months' work; choreographer: about the same; hair/makeup/clothes budget:£400-£1500 depending on how many tv shows you do/no. of band members; promo video budget: £2000-£20000...I could go on. Remember, I'm talking about Entertaining Pop artists, not the next big indie singer-songwriter who only needs her guitar and a hairbrush to make it big - they can use the internet to stream their music & radio to reach a wide audience, and wouldn't really benefit from the investment required to exploit telly as a means of publicity.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

Exactly. 'Unsigned artist' was a bad choice of words, but your comment was "what if I'm not a Fergie fan yet?" The point I was trying to make is that if you want to see artists you've never heard of, mainstream pop TV is not the answer, because they fill their airtime with artists people have heard of and want to hear again i.e. successful ones. A segment on Evil Twin Silver Springs dressed as pineapples is pointless. How do you find out about an act that you're not already a fan of? I imagine that the answer is very rarely "on pop TV" unless you basically ignore all radio, TV, print media for a year and then watch some pop TV.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

> they fill their airtime with artists people have heard of and want to hear again

Perhaps that's where mainstream pop TV is going wrong!

But I see what you're getting at. However just because I've heard of Fergie doesn't mean I'm a fan of hers. I might have ignored all previous reference to her and her music. Then whilst waiting for my favourite established artists Silver Springs to come on screen dressed as pineapples, I catch a glimpse of Fergie being interviewed about her love of small dogs wearing hats. I realise I was wrong to dismiss her without giving her a chance & go and seek out her album...

I realise that not everyone's opinions on popstars can change so wildly as mine can, and this is probably the actual reason music telly doesn't work.