WHAT’S SO FUNNY ‘BOUT PEACE, LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING? [40]

[John Birt, with Mick Jagger, for "World in Action"]

Once upon a time, in a United Kingdom riven with economic and social problems, and questions over our future relationship with Europe, people began looking at how the news was not informing us in the way we needed, to help us understand and solve our problems.

I could be talking about Brexit, “fake news” and “alternative facts,” but the year is actually 1975, marked in Britain by high inflation, social unrest and voting to remain in the Common Market. Like now, it was people within the news companies themselves talking about how to properly reflect what was happening.

The key arguments were published in a series of articles in “The Times” in 1975-76, co-written by its Economics Editor, Peter Jay, with John Birt, the Head of Current Affairs for London Weekend Television. Birt was also responsible for LWT’s political discussion show “Weekend World,” which was presented by Jay. If you can find these articles, you will be rewarded with passionate polemic sent out by two people who must have loved working out what they would propose, as manifestoes come about when there is a moment to be seized.

The extremely short version of their findings was that television journalism, an uneasy mix of newspaper-style reporting and film-style documentary storytelling, had a “bias against understanding,” caused by providing too little time in news bulletins to provide enough context and focus to events happening on the surface, not providing enough of a link to what they highlight and the wider issue it illustrated, and focussing too much on stories, rather than issues. Failing to inform the public could even be considered as anti-social.

Their solution would be to create one central news unit, encompassing numerous disparate news and current affairs programme teams, in order to work together. The main focus would be one hour-long programme every night, covering the main five or six stories of the day in great detail, not unlike later shows like “Newsnight” or “Channel 4 News,” complemented by weekly reviews, monthly investigations of the main issues of the times, and feature programmes that answered questions as they came up.

If this proposal sounded like fewer people would watch, the argument was that the public reaction to the new style of stories would be more “oh, I see,” than “oh, my god!” Likewise, mixing of fact and comment already happens, as choosing what to include in a report is already making a value judgement. Any concerns on integrating teams into a big bureaucracy would be countered by the opportunities provided by working together.

Did anything ever come of this? What didn’t help is that 1970s television was slower in general, the first news bulletins of any type not appearing until lunchtime, making an end-of-day wrap-up easier to implement. However, as 24-hour news cycles were replaced by constant streams, from the introduction of CNN in 1980, through to online sites and social media, it is too easy to be simply be given all available information, then to make of it what you will, all by yourself, or with those that agree with you.

While “Newsnight” and “Channel 4 News” have more time to go into detail, did John Birt and Peter Jay get the chance to make their proposals work? After writing the articles, Jay had a term as UK Ambassador to the United States, and Birt produced David Frost’s interviews with Richard Nixon, in which the former president ultimately admitted to letting the American people down. Jay would then be asked by Frost to become chairman of breakfast television station TV-am, where its “mission to explain” stuck to the “Times” articles closely, but petered out after a few weeks, due to a lack of viewers, infighting at the station that resulted in Jay leaving, and the simple fact that heavyweight analysis doesn’t work at six o’clock in the bloody morning.

At the BBC, John Birt, who was hired as Deputy Director-General, before getting the top job, enacted the proposals as far as he could. News and current affairs departments, based in different parts of London, were merged into one, and “Editors” were employed to inject context straight into bulletins – Peter Jay became Economics Editor in 1990.

If there is a moment to be seized, you have to make a persuasive argument. If it has been made before, then it has to be clear why it is worth making the case again. Change never came easy, as Birt and Jay made clear:

“There is no easy path to understanding. The conscientious journalist, having climbed the mountain, should of course make it easier for those who follow. But we should be suspicious of those who offer a low and painless road to the top. For it seldom, if ever, exists.”

DUN-DUN-DUUUUNNNN!!! [39]

I am still on a “Mission to Explain,” but what I had in mind requires more reading in order to explain correctly, and we must now also contend with the new term “alternative facts,” coined in the last week, i.e. facts that counter the facts most unhelpful to your own cause. Instead, I have a very important piece of information, discovered in the last couple of days, that made the world a little better for having discovered it.

The extremely well-known sound effect, “DUN-DUN-DUUUUNNNN!!!,” used as the most over-the-top reaction to, well, anything, not only has an actual name, but a composer as well.

Its correct name is “Shock Horror (a),” credited to Dick Walter (whose website is at www.dickwalter.co.uk - he also composed the famous piano tune from the series of advertisements for Yellow Pages), and comes from the “Classic Comedy” album produced by “library music” company KPM, now known as EMI Production Music, a division of Sony Music Publishing (formerly Sony/ATV Music Publishing - the music industry has many twists and turns).

I wouldn’t be surprised if the original reaction to this is, “who cares,” but, to me, knowing that the ubiquitous “DUN-DUN-DUUUUNNNN!!!” was actually written by someone makes it that bit funnier.

“Shock Horror (a)” – there is a “Shock Horror (b),” where the notes of music descend, instead of ascending with tension – is so ubiquitous a piece of music, I had it filed away in my mind alongside the “shave and a haircut” coda I previously discussed here, but it then becomes too easy to think “Shock Horror (a)” had also existed since the dawn of time, evolving from a basic human need to have the most over-the-top reaction available, on standby, should the need arise – knowing such a need is certain to arise is a discussion in itself. Only then do you remember it is a recording of an orchestra, meaning it had to have been made by someone, something that can be too easily be taken for granted.

This is where the existence of “library music,” and British companies like KPM, Bruton and DeWolfe, comes in – pieces of music that have been written in anticipation of a need yet to be determined. An example of their use is by the TV show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” which, along with the first two Python films, relied upon the DeWolfe library for almost all the music you heard, finding music to fit their sketches.

This situation throws up some interesting cases. “Best Endeavours,” written as a corporate-sounding piece by Alan Hawkshaw, is best known as the theme for “Channel 4 News,” but was also used by the 7 Network in Australia for their main evening news, and even in the Clint Eastwood film “Pale Rider.” Another Hawskhaw piece, “Chicken Man,” was used by the BBC as the theme for children’s drama “Grange Hill,” while being used by ITV, at the same time, for the game show “Give Us a Clue.”

From personal experience, listening to library music is like falling down a rabbit hole, going from one piece to the next, imagining what you could do with them. It’s worth a go, if you are looking for some new sounds.