HE JUST STARES BACK UNBLINKING [352]

My TV, a Toshiba 32LL3A63DB

I have been without a television for a week at the time of writing. I had just finished summer cleaning, sat down to relax, turned on my TV, and found no picture. A troubleshooting phone call revealed it was still in-warranty, so I sent it away to be fixed.

Being the year 2022, this inconvenience has reduced me from four screens to only three, as my phone, tablet and computer attempt to fill the gap temporarily left by the TV, but their nature as multi-purpose devices make them poorer substitutes than I had reason to expect, as I sit over to examine programmes I am more used to seeing in a more relaxed, laid-back position.

In having to actively look for content to watch, I have missed the opportunity that TV provides in just switching it on and showing me something, to effectively switch myself off for a moment, as it were - getting to sleep has taken longer in this last week.

This would also be the week that Boris Johnson resigned as leader of the Conservative Party, his petulant speech underlining his tenure as Prime Minister as one of the most divisive and sordid in modern times. Instead of letting the TV take the strain in reporting what happened, able to recede into the background as I relaxed into the evening, I continued to scroll through news updates on my phone, like my work day never stopped.

In my experience, television is a passive medium, even if I play an increasing role in choosing the programmes, as both the number of channels, and the number of ways to send programmes to it, have increased. It is not the same as radio or podcasts, where you are listening intently by nature of its form – I found that I have not had the radio on at home in the evening to substitute for the TV, because that would force me to listen more intently at a time when I am trying to relax. There is an argument for my experiencing a withdrawal from the higher dopamine and serotonin levels experienced when watching TV, but I will only know that for sure when my TV is fixed and sent back to me.

I had intended to write about Marshall McLuhan’s concepts of “hot” and “cool” media, from his 1964 book “Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man”, which I have talked about previously [link]. His definition of TV as “cool”, through the user having to do the work in connecting with the TV’s message, and filtering out any distractions from outside it. 

This hasn’t fit with my experience – I have more control over what my TV shows me than McLuhan, who witnessed the medium’s introduction in his native Canada, and would only have access to two networks, CBC and CTV, by 1964. Bigger screens and better sound also make TV and its programmes more cinematic, film being codified as a “hot” medium through its handling more of the work in relaying its message.

However, McLuhan defined a “medium” like an extension of the human body, such as  switching on a lightbulb to change the nature of your surroundings. Even if TV is just a way of packaging what I want to see, I now realise how well it did that job.

IT’S FAMILIAR, BUT NOT TOO FAMILIAR [304]

It is well known that “podcasting” was a term coined by Ben Hammersley, in an article [link] for “The Guardian” in February 2004. What is less commented on is that said article was precisely about what to call the “new boom in amateur radio” spurred by both the rise of MP3 players and services like Audible, and the fall in the cost of the tools used in audio production. 

The other terms offered by Hammersley, “audioblogging” and “GuerillaMedia,” are not precise enough, but the portmanteau of “iPod” and “broadcasting” nails both the delivery system that made the new media possible, and the closeness of its discipline to traditional media like radio and television. Hammersley is now primarily known as a futurist and “strategic foresight consultant,” obviously having foreseen the need for that kind of role.

 

It has taken me an extraordinarily long time to start listening to podcasts with any amount of regularity. Just like I continue to think of YouTube as an extension of traditional television, podcasting is the same for radio. It does not help that most podcasts are most often speech-based and 30-60 minutes in length, exactly the sort of show already broadcast on radio stations like BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service – indeed, BBC-produced podcasts like “Death in Ice Valley” and “You, Me and the Big C” have been repeated on traditional radio with no material change. 

 

I think my problem has been that “podcast” has felt like another word for “radio,” just as “quadrilogy,” describing something in four parts, has apparently taken place of the word “tetralogy,” which means exactly the same thing. If I felt that my listening needs were already met by radio, I was less likely to need podcasts. 

 

What finally turned me on to podcasts was finding extreme examples of where the content offered was different from regular radio shows. My two regular podcast listens are “CheapShow,” the economy comedy podcast I have talked about previously [link], and now “My Brother, My Brother and Me,” the advice podcast where advice is only given by accident. In their own separate ways, they are structured as traditional radio magazine shows, but their content is completely unencumbered by broadcasting regulations on swearing or subject matter, and conversations can take their natural course because episodes do not need to fit within a radio station’s schedule. 

 

It sounds like it took me too long to discover the blindingly obvious, but my defence is that while a podcast can potentially fit into spaces on British radio, particularly on the BBC, podcasts are more distinctive in their birthplace, the United States, because radio there is more constricted in content – mixed-genre stations died out with the move of mass audiences to television in the 1950s, leaving live DJ-driven music radio, and phone-in talk shows, as the dominant formats through their being easier and cheaper to produce. Outside of National Public Radio, the need to create a form in which more different types of shows could be produced was greater in the United States, and its similarity to radio made it easier to adopt.

 

Having said all of this, I am not planning to launch a podcast despite the low barrier to entry. All I have is a title, “Let’s Find Yes,” and nothing further than that.

DISTURB THE SOUND OF SILENCE [106]

All I need is to press “Scan,” and my digital radio will produce a list of available stations, but there is no game in that. My main radio used to be a large hi-fi system, to which you could connect your own FM aerial, and see if you could pick up stations that should be too far away. I managed quite well – a fifty-mile radius from my home is not too bad for FM radio, even if some stations could be drowned out by signals both nearer and stronger. I still have the hi-fi system, mostly for the record player and CD recorder I also attached to it, but radio is far more convenient to find now and, if you are listening online, you can pick up a far better sound than FM can ever produce.

I have decided to try the game again, this time with a supermarket own-brand radio. For reasons known only to them, Tesco are selling a twelve-band world radio – FM, medium wave, long wave, and nine short-wave bands of varying wavelengths and frequencies - for EIGHT POUNDS (or about ELEVEN US DOLLARS). Short wave was not something I used a lot, mainly because you could still listen to the BBC World Service on medium wave in the UK until 2011, and because short-wave radio is more used for foreign-language broadcasts to far-flung areas, for amateur / ham radio, and for time signals used by radio-controlled clocks.

What did I find on short-wave radio? Firstly, between 4.8 and 4.9 MHz, I found what appeared to be a 1980s Casio keyboard playing some random notes – there also noises like a fax machine and dial-up internet, as there appeared to be more than one broadcast in that range. At about 6.0 MHz, I found the first instance of speech, but I could not hear what language it may have been over all the other noise on the signal, until I held on to the aerial with my other hand – moving away from my computer also helped a bit. Various stations were found up to about 6.3 MHz. An American English radio bulletin came up at about 9.9 MHz, and a rather insistent piece of classical music was heard at 11.7 MHz, with various other pieces of speech and music heard between 10 and 12 MHz.

It turns out that, because short-wave radio can cross continents by reflecting signals off the ionosphere – medium wave, FM and higher TV signals usually can only travel in straight lines – there are restrictions caused by when during the day, and year, that reflection is most effective. If you pick up a short-wave radio, you will find most stations located between 5.8-6.2 and 9.4-9.9 MHz, because these frequencies have the least disruption. The many stations I did hear may also all be part of one or two services, as both the BBC World Service and Voice of America broadcast from some transmitters for only one or two hours at a time, in certain languages, on certain days, when the frequency works the best for where it needs to reach. All the Casio noise also turned out to be the signals for my alarm clock, as time signals are usually clustered around 5, 10 and 15 MHz.

However, I don’t know how much more useful my world radio will be, at least where I am. Short-wave broadcasts normally target countries where getting good information is either scarce or vital, like parts of Africa, or Iran or North Korea, which are targets for the BBC and VOA. If you can otherwise use FM, digital radio, or even podcasts, you will. Still, I will keep my battery-operated radio to remain informed if my electricity  supply, or wi-fi, goes out.

AND WE’LL KEEP ON FIGHTING ‘TIL THE END [27]

Well, my original intention to write about newspapers was to excoriate how they assume their way of reflecting the United Kingdom fits the national character, how they second-guess the thoughts and reactions of their audience, before prescribing what they should think, and how they berate those who do not have the same ways they do, calling them “champagne socialists,” “the establishment,” or “Bremoaners” (the last one is particularly annoying, as if only a few people voted to stay in the European Union).

However, that is what most people think about newspapers, including many who still buy them – thankfully, they have other features and pull-out sections about less contentious stuff, particularly at the weekend, when we have more time to read them. The bigger question that came out of my preparation for this display of putting one word in front of the other, having not bought my usual Saturday copy of “The Times” recently, is: “does anyone still buy newspapers?”

It is a bit of an obvious question, as the answer, for now, is still “yes.” “The Sun” still sells nearly 1.7 million copies a day, and the “Daily Mail” is just behind that. However, only ten years ago, they each sold nearly a million more than that. The “Daily Express” once claimed the biggest circulation in the world, at over five million copies, except that was in the 1930s – now, they can’t even scrape 400,000 but, unlike “The Sun,” “Mail” and most other papers, they don’t give copies away, competing the million-plus copies of the “Metro” sent out every morning.

Sales of newspapers essentially started to decline with the start of radio, its potential seen immediately as a threat. The General Strike of 1926 hobbled the print industry, even reducing “The Times” down to two sides of an A4 sheet, but radio, with a number of bulletins per day, still got the news out to people, and in a much more efficient way. Once the strike was over, the British Broadcasting Company received a Royal Charter to become a corporation, but newspaper companies managed to have bulletins restricted to evenings only, using only news supplied by them – the outbreak of the Second World War to put an end to that.

So, what of newspapers now? Shorn of the ability to break stories first, they can only rely on influence, either through investigations being reported on by wider media, such as the “Guardian” series on phone hacking, or through its journalists being called upon to speak on TV and radio news. Meanwhile, the preponderance of opinionated columnists, like Katie Hopkins, and the inevitable Twitter backlashes they inspire, is the nearest we get to experiencing that particularly American type of talk radio that never arose in the UK, because we still had newspapers for that point of view.

As much as the “Guardian” website implores me to help pay for its content, it has given it away for seventeen years now, and when advertising on a website that attracts nine million regular visitors can’t pay for the level of quality it has to maintain its brand, and the only other option is paying TWO QUID for the paper version, there may come a point where the concept of a “newspaper” may end. It all depends if you can convince people to pay for it online, which “The Times” had, although “The Sun” scrapped its paywall after lack of interest. Thankfully, I don’t need to work out the answer but, if enough people are reading online, they could save the money spent printing ink onto woodpulp.

WE’RE NOT GONNA SIT IN SILENCE [17]

Well, there was me thinking the most important parts of a pair of headphones were put in your ears. Instead, I have heard people moan that, if they next upgrade to the iPhone 7, they can’t plug in their existing pair.

Apart from going wireless, they could use the headphones Apple provide with the phone – a fact seemingly lost on the most annoyed of people - or use the limp-looking adaptor also bundled with it, possibly put there to head off the complaints. Some people really needed a reason to feel screwed: so, because Apple made something a tiny bit fiddlier, they are being outright hostile to you?

Phil Schiller was mocked online for his use of the word “courage” when explaining why Apple removed the iPhone’s headphone jack but, when you are head of marketing at the biggest consumer electronics company on Earth, and you tell people why their habit of a lifetime probably should change, you have to be sure you’re right.

As someone who, for the last twenty years, hasn’t left the house without a radio or MP3 player, I have untangled enough headphone cords, and had them pop out of my ears after catching them on things, to know there must be a better way.

Having said that, the only reason I still tether myself to my source of anti-silence has been the cost of a decent pair of Bluetooth or wireless headphones, by a reputable brand. That will only change when more people buy them, either by showing why they should have it, or by forcing them to shift over.

Even then, headphones are only as good as their connection, and relying on technology as old as wax cylinders really shouldn’t be tolerated by now. Last month, when I had problems with the sound on my MP3 player cutting out, it was because the contacts that line up with the jack had become dirty. This time, it wasn’t a pulled wire, but in an age of USB and Lightning inputs, should my David Bowie listening be interrupted by bits of grit?

Sony introduced the 3.5 mm headphone jack in 1964, fifteen years before the first Walkman. It was a scaled-down version of the 6.25 mm jack, first introduced in 1878 – yes, one hundred and thirty-eight years ago! - for use in telephone exchanges, as seen in old film footage of people in roller skates, plugging cords into giant walls of holes. However, the bigger jack is still used enough for me to have an adaptor bundled in with a pair of headphones I use at home.

No amount of bass boost, neodymium magnets, or digital whatever, are going to make a bit of difference, unless you can guarantee none of that sound can be lost. That can only happen once we have jacked in the jack, or something like that.

I AIN’T GONNA STAND FOR IT [11]

For my own sake, I once had to check that “ain’t” was a proper word, thinking I discovered a blind spot in my ability to speak and write. I’m still not sure - even when typing that last sentence, Microsoft Word thought I wanted to say “isn’t,” “aren’t,” or “am not” instead.

“Ain’t” first appeared in the mid-eighteenth century as a development of “an’t,” itself a contraction of “am not,” or “is not,” with the original “amn’t,” having appeared in around 1610. It is a simple case of words blending over time, with “aren’t” also popping up in about 1675, before “ain’t” became an alternative for that word too. Like the verb “to be not,” “ain’t” can also mean “to have not,” but it took until the nineteenth century for “han’t” to become “an’t,” before the vowel was rounded out in different parts of the country.

Having asked around, there appears to be an active dislike of the “aaaaaiiiiiinnnnn’” sound of “ain’t,” with one person reacting like I had threatened to hit them. With the idea of a standard English dialect, devoid of regional differences, being spread by the introduction of regular radio broadcasts in the 1920s, perhaps the sounds of some words no longer fit how English was expected to sound.

Having a word that so easily replaces others also gives the impression it is too easy to use when speaking informally, leading to a generally accepted rule that “ain’t” ain’t to be written down. The website lexico.com advises “ain’t” is not to be used in a formal or written context precisely because “it does not form part of standard English” – well, punctuating sentences with swear words is not standard English, and I know what reaction I would get if I said that to someone.

However, as someone who used “knackered” in a secondary school writing exercise over twenty years ago, describing a particular kind of tiredness, only to see a red line put through it, and “tired?” written above it, “ain’t” can be shown to be the perfect choice of word, without resorting to dredging up examples of when Charles Dickens and Anthony Trollope used it.

Taking lexico.com at their word, are song lyrics not an example of formal writing? Using lyrics as titles for my articles here meant that, this time around, I was spoilt for choice – instead of the Stevie Wonder song I chose for this article's title, I could have chosen “Ain’t Nobody,” “Ain’t That a Shame,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” or even “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s my Brother.” No-one would ever criticise these songs of sloppy diction, in an art form where choosing the right word is as crucial as hitting the right notes, as the single syllable of “ain’t” can be used to provide a powerful punch.

Following this reasoning, formal writing cannot deploy language in as strong a fashion as a song, due to the rules we insist on imposing. Daring to correct the chorus to “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” will only dilute the impact of its carefully chosen words – or, if you like, it becomes knackered.