Last Wednesday, I left my phone on the Piccadilly Line. This Monday, my Macbook’s hard drive conked out. Apart from stuff floating around in the cloud, I lost every single bit of my data. What follows are a few simple things that I’ve learnt over the last few days.
Because there clearly aren’t enough of them in the world, here’s the first in a new venture on Dirty Feed – a podcast. This episode, I use Victor Lewis-Smith’s 90s series TV Offal as an excuse to play a one minute long jingle from a radio station in Denver:
Download Podcast #1: TV Offal (22MB MP3, 12:00)
(Subscribe using RSS / iTunes)
These will be published WHENEVER I CAN BE BOTHERED, and are deliberately starting off pretty short. Feedback more than welcome – I’ve been involved in G&T’s Dwarfcasts for over five years now, but this is the first time I’ve done one myself.
Give it a listen! Or: don’t.
With thanks to David Barras, Bigdave, Robin Blamires, jlehmann, jonno, Sean Martin, and mjb1124 on JingleMad for help and audio.
Over a year and a half after I read this article on radio, I keep coming back to it:
“Q: Why should I listen to your radio station?
After all, I have an iPod with more than 10,000 tunes that collectively form the soundtrack of my life. I have more music on my computer. I can listen to endless computer-generated combinations – better mix, better variety – that can surprise me and amuse me between now and whenever I lose my interest, my sanity, my life. My iPod can do all that; my computer can do it too.
So why should I listen to your radio station?
After all, I can listen to online stations that programme the music I like (70s retro … electronica … ambient), and many of these play without interruption, without call-letters, without commercials, without an intervening human presence.
So why should I listen to our radio station in this brave new world of choice and lifestyle-customisation and narrowcasting?
And yet listen I do. I need radio.”
Give the whole thing a read. It sums up most of my thoughts about what radio should be doing… and why so many stations leave me cold.
The McDonalds at Leeming Bar services near Northallerton, July 2009:
So, the BBC have announced Laugh Track, a talent contest to find “the next big Studio Sitcom”. OK, so maybe I’m not so keen on the contest side of things – and alarm bells ring in my head when I read things like “we’re looking for writers that reflect modern Britain” – but hey, it’s still pleasing to see the BBC obviously care about audience sitcom, after some wobbly moments a few years ago. And to go with it, we have this blog post, giving some “handy” hints on how to write your script.
Let’s swiftly move past some of the questionable things in that article – a “comedy sitcom”, eh? – and get to the key section:
“In non-studio comedy series you can do strange, subtle, unusual things – think The Office, Peep Show, The Thick of It, Flight of the Conchords. In studio sitcoms, you have to make the people in the room laugh – out loud, and preferably as often as possible.”
Last Friday saw the last Red Dwarf X audience recording. And last Saturday saw the last Red Dwarf X Ganymede & Titan audience recording report. I’ve been part of the site since 2003, and whilst I don’t like to blow my own trumpet, as Alex Picton-Dinch would say, I do think these are some of the best things we’ve ever published, and worth a link here. If only because it’s fairly difficult to make them boring.
Another day, another entry in our Ken R jingle sampler series – and this time, we’re back to original PAMS jingles, all recorded between 1960 and 1977:
The Livin’ End (98MB ZIP, password: kenr)
As usual, this compilation has loads of great stuff – including some nice country jingles which often seem to get looked over when talking about the history of PAMS, and some extremely amusing session excerpts which pile on the nonsense noises with each take. But my favourite of the batch here is simply known as the WTVY (FM) Happy Day Song.
The perfect way to start your day.
Jingle compilation by Ken R. Deutsch. PAMS material © PAMS Productions, Inc. of Dallas.
Here’s a slightly bizarre promo running on GOLD at the moment, which is a good example of how to take an interesting idea and do it in the trademark GOLD irritating way:
I’m certainly not posting this for its quality, but I thought it was worth mentioning just because it’s quite rare for television itself talks about scheduling and transmission to the general public, especially in promos and the like. Feels very odd. Could have been great in the right hands.
Anyway, transmission is more exciting than scheduling, natch.
As we return after a Christmas break to our Ken R. jingle sampler series, we have something slightly different than the last three. The previous samplers were all material from PAMS; this one takes us on a trip around other jingle production houses – material from Pepper Tanner, Heller, and Sande & Greene to name but three. A shame perhaps that there isn’t more context included, but this is still 55 minutes of awesomeness.
Not PAMS Sampler (85MB ZIP, password: kenr)
As for my favourites, it isn’t entire tracks this time, but just two jingles I want to single out. Firstly, Wonderful Town, Wonderful People from Richard Ullman and Associates – I thought this was a PAMS jingle for years, and I think it gives PAMS’s My Home Town a run for its money:
And secondly, from Heller – well, one of the most bizarre radio jingles I think I’ve ever heard…
Jingle compilation by Ken R. Deutsch.
