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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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]

See my comment to Ben below - the right format can extract the fun side out of popstars and endear them to the record-buying audience. This is the sort of thing that makes me buy eg the TashBed album.

[bengraham.livejournal.com]

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

Yes, but there's nothing to stop artists either
a) taking advantage of this opportunity by posting videos of themselves doing ridiculous things to plug their new single online (either as a standalone video, or as a trailer before the video for said single begins playing)
b) ensuring that their appearances on such TV shows as Popworld get uploaded onto ver web as individual clips. That way, if I am a Fergie fan, I don't have to watch 25 minutes of The View and James Morrison to see the Fergie segment of the show, I can just pick to watch the Fergie segment and then segue into something by another artist of my choosing.

[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.

[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.

*

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

But what if I'm not a Fergie fan YET? How am I meant to know where her website is or what the video clip of her dressed as a giant pineapple is called on youtube?

Also getting artists to do this off their own back is v tricky (unless you are Britney Spears, hahahah), they're too busy touring/recording and worry about their respectable/badass image. Popworld had a dedicated team of dudes thinking up ridiculous stuff for their guests to do in order to get them to relax a bit and show their true personality (for better or for worse!).

This is why websites like Popjustice are enjoyable - I know where to look for regular popstar piss-take entertainment. However despite plenty of video clips and audio samples, it's not the same as seeing Fergie in a pineapple costume.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

the issue of sound is really REALLY fundamental i think

does anyone apart from themetune composers actually give any thought to how what they're doin sounds on a TV? (ok yes soundtrack composers but cf WHO for the level of thinking applied, which is NOT VERY MUCH)

[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.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

This is why miming was generally the best option.

And why even the hoariest of fifty-quid men remembers the CLOTHES and LOOKS and impression of general COOLNESS when they think of "legendary pop TV moments" rather than remembering the magnificent interpretation of a song.

[piratemoggy.livejournal.com]

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

[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]

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

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

How do classical concerts manage it?

[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

[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]

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

Ah but then you change it to Hits!TV, where there's always something good on. :-)

ORGAFUN WILL REIGN FOREVER

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

One thing is that TV is fully aware that it'll get broken up and YouTubed - this isn't really anything they can do anything about, but it means that the old Top Of The Pops model, with lots of discrete bits, doesn't work. The qn is how can it get round this by making the various elements in the show actually interplay. X-Factor, as Mark says below, does this in a very crude way - even if you have a favourite you're going to watch the whole thing anyway. Same with Eurovision.

Turning it into a game seems to work, but how to do this in a way which allows a blend of music styles, formats etc?

One obvious thing is to turn the Top 40 into a game format - the charts already is a kind of weekly listener-participation contest anyway. Take the top new entries and highest climbers each week, put in last week's winner, they perform (or show videos as schedules permit), there's interview and chat too, the "winner" each week gets prime spot on the Radio 1 or 2 playlist (making it worthwhile for acts to join in!).

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Usually they're better musicians. They actually get paid a wage for playing (I have no idea if its a decent one or not though) instead of an advance to be flushed away on booze and 'recording albums'.

Also orchestral instruments are designed for playing 'live' instead of being tweaked through an amplifier/mixing desk. Plus orchestras are usually quite big so less amplification required + less obvious if one of them makes a mistake.

This is why the Proms work very well on telly, and live pop music (eg Glastonbury coverage) is mostly terrible.