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.

PARADISE ON EARTH IT IS TO SEE [38]

Until now, I only knew this about the Czech Republic: SS Normandie, one of the fastest ocean liners of the 1930s, had a rudder made by Skoda Works, of which the car company was a part. Therefore, I was glad to come across something that ordered me to look further.

In September 2016, I heard the government of the Czech Republic had decided to officially adopt “Czechia” as the short form of the country’s name, to be used in everyday life, much like “United Kingdom,” “Great Britain” and “England” are used to substitute for a much longer name. More information is available at the Czechia Civic Initiative’s website www.go-czechia.com

This adoption actually took place six months earlier, but was really only reported in the UK when a British Government committee, the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names, advised all British people to start using the name.

The reasons the Czech government gave for adopting “Czechia,” chiefly to avoid confusion on what the short name for its country actually is, indicates the need for odd-sounding committees. “Czechia” has also been updated on the United Nations’ databases of country names, and is listed under the ISO 3166 standard for country names, which is something that exists.

I originally scoffed upon hearing “Czechia.” Hearing it for the first time (and then finding “Czechia” has been used on an off since the 19^thcentury), the suffix “-ia” is used by so many other countries, including neighbouring Slovakia, it sounded too easy to add, especially when you consider the “utopia” described in the Czech national anthem, “Where Do I Live?”

Because corporate rebranding also exists, we are used to accepting, and rejecting, new names. The general store Wilkinson rebranded as “Wilko” in 2015, but it sounds too “matey” for me to take seriously. There was also the unanimous rejection of “Consignia plc” as the name for Royal Mail in 2002, after just fifteen months, because it tried to convey trustworthiness by using a made-up Latin-sounding word.

The main aim of “Czechia” was achieved very quickly – people were talking about Czechia. It is a country of actual Bohemians, and Moravians, and Silesians. It is the birthplace of Franz Kafka, Jan Svankmajer, Antonin Dvorak, Martina Navratilova, the arc lamp, the modern contact lens, the term “robot,” the A-B-O blood groups, pilsner beer, and the sugar cube. It is one of the happiest countries in Europe, and Prague is the fifth most visited city in Europe.

Most importantly, however, is the Czech Republic being both a medieval and modern country - Bohemia was part of the Holy Roman Empire, but Czechia has only been an independent country since 1993. “Czechia,” as a name, is rooted in the Slavic tribe that resided in Bohemia from the 9th century, while succeeding as a very modern branding exercise. No matter how long “Czechia” existed as an option, it still reminded its first modern president, the writer and philosopher Vaclav Havel, of independence from Slovakia, which he initially opposed, in addition to “crushed slugs.”

The next time I am likely to come across Czechia, as a country, will be in the Eurovision Song Contest in May – I will keep an eye on which name they use.

GIVE US TIME TO WORK IT OUT [37]

I am lucky that my time studying for a degree was before the internet became the place where everybody, and everything, lives. Researching for essays between 2001 and 2004, I had to physically go and look for information, in bookshops and libraries, making copious notes and photocopies, and thinking about what it all means – I am in my thirties, making myself sound old. 

It is not enough knowing where you can go, it’s making sense of what you find. I am still doing that with the world now, let alone all those years ago, and that is how it should be – anyone who thinks they have it all worked out should be checked to see if they are already dead.

What stuck with me since is how the world was interpreted, in the latter half of the last century, as a time of “postmodernity.” Many thinkers, most of them French - Jean-François Lyotard, Claude Levi-Strauss, Jean Beaudrillard, Walter Truett Anderson, and so on - made their own observations, that have coalesced into a theory, borne out by movements in art and architecture at the time.

I can only be brief when describing what it all means here, because the subject is that big, and my decade-plus-old notes are that numerous. If the following makes you want to look further into the subject, my job is done.

As I understand it, postmodernity reacts against the notion of modernity, which embodied constant change, in the pursuit of progress. However, if everything is constantly changing, there is no need for the idea of progress – we are already there. We will still have new ideas, and new developments, but instead of existing to replace and overcome what came before, they now join the old ideas, bumping the out-there with the outdated, high culture and low culture, in a giant smorgasbord of, well, everything.

Everything bubbles to the surface, and what a surface to pick from. Let’s make a building that looks like a grandfather clock, like the AT&T Building in New York, now owned by Sony. Instead of straight lines and blank walls, let’s add old-style adornments, but make our own versions of them, like the eggcups on top of the former TV-am building in London, made for a breakfast TV company. Let’s collide a dystopian city landscape with 1940s film noir, as in the film “Blade Runner”. Let’s contort the human body, playing with conventions of gender, as Grace Jones, Klaus Nomi and David Bowie did. Let’s paint the Coca-Cola logo on a Han dynasty vase, making it more worthy, and worth more, as Ai Weiwei did.

In this small number of examples, there is a deliberate, ironic mixing of styles – everybody knew what they were doing, and were not just mashing things up in the hope of a nice effect. To achieve this ability of feeling that there are no rules, there is an inherent scepticism, or mistrust, of the existing through lines of history that explain all about everything to everyone, referred to as “grand narratives.” Like looking up quotations for an essay, you have to think about who came up with these narratives, why they did, and the choices they made about what to talk about, and what to leave out.

Critics of postmodernism often take this to mean there is no such thing as the truth, only interpretations, and neither does it mean you are incapable of finding the truth: if it was, you could either say whatever you liked, or nothing at all. If you can put aside the usual attempts to find a rational, objective, absolute truth, and think about how truth and knowledge are constructed out of all the discussions and interpretations that led to it, then you will understand it more than just having it handed to you on a plate.

It is generally agreed that postmodernism was no longer the prevailing view of the world by the time I learned of it, and this is at the expense of progress – when technology starts becoming indistinguishable from magic, as Arthur C. Clarke already saw in his lifetime, we are looking at how the world can become better than it already is. Perhaps, this is out of a need to destroy what makes it bad, whether it be a never-ending war against terrorism in all its forms, or mindlessly-written death threats on Twitter from people that can operate a computer, but don’t know how to boil an egg, even if they know where to look it up.

I will continue looking at postmodernism, seeing what more I can understand from it, but If everyone needs to look up right now, I am quite happy to continue looking across, making sense of where we stand.

IF YOU’RE NOT THE ONE [36]

The first act of 2017 appears to be replacing circling hippos with an aerobics class. After ten years, BBC One has replaced its channel idents, themed around “circles,” evocating the globe logos it used for many years, in favour of snapshots of groups of people, directed by photographer Martin Parr, themed around the idea of “oneness.”

So far, we have just four idents, out of a promised twenty-four – the aerobics class, a group of sea swimmers, and a slightly different version of each one. They are a bit sparse, with no music or sound apart from what is in the scene, and too mundane when compared with what they replaced. There are also too few idents available right now, risking outstaying their welcome by the time the next ones appear.

I thought that enthusiasm for TV idents was just an online pursuit, where you can go into as much detail as you want, but I am no longer sure. I really should know, as this happened before.

The first time I appeared on the radio, said in anticipation of a next time, was on Monday 29^th March 2002, when I called Nicky Campbell’s morning show on BBC Radio 5 Live. Earlier that morning, BBC One switched its globe-shaped hot air balloon for “Rhythm and Movement” - groups of people dancing.

One of the idents, filmed at the Minack Theatre in Porthcurno, Cornwall, featured ten ballerinas performing a graceful dance, to the sounds of a string quartet that was led by a cello. This particular ident was described as being “too middle class,” and I called up to point out the sole point is to tell you what channel you are watching. It did sound a bit naïve at the time, but I was let onto Nicky Campbell’s show to say that – I think Nick Knowles was there too.

After making the point that, when I was born, BBC One’s single ident was a turning lime green globe on a blue background, I was thanked for my comments, and the show moved on. They did not discuss the ballet any further, my appearance having killed that conversation stone dead.

TV idents were borne of a time when you physically had to tune your TV to the correct channel, and even then, you were just as likely to have programmes introduced by someone appearing on screen to talk to you. BBC Two continues to show why logos and branding is important, as people are still enjoying watching their older “2” idents, made as early as 1991. Radio jingles fall into the same nostalgia, hoping you remember their frequency – all in the south of Hampshire sing with me now: “One-oh-three-point-two, Power-F-M!”

However, on digital TV, radio and online, where you can simply scan your receiver, and select your viewing from a list, idents are no longer needed – you are already where you need to be. You see more picture postcard-style idents, like those on ITV, and now BBC One, because they reflect their audience, and are easier, and cheaper, to produce.  In addition, getting audiences to programmes do not rely on individual channels so much, unless you count the BBC iPlayer or Netflix as a “channel.” For the BBC, Martin Parr’s new idents may be more important for the “BBC” on screen, rather than for the “One.”

THE HOPES AND FEARS OF ALL THE YEARS [35]

I stopped looking back on 2016 about three months ago, when I stopped keeping a regular diary. I like to keep a diary, because I like to have a sense of my own history. Just as everyone uses (and should use) history to make sense of their present, a diary is something I can use to keep track of how I think, what I make of events as they occur, and to trip myself up when I realise I could have approached things in a better way.

I had stopped keeping a diary because the events of this year became a bit, well, overwhelming, as I am sure it did for many. Numerous reviews of the year centred on the political world events – Brexit, Trump, increasing nationalism, Syria – and the deaths of people who were not done with life, like George Michael and Carrie Fisher, to name only two from just the last week. There is sense of, “I’ll come back to this later” – needing that bit of distance, to have the right perspective of things, before you can start to make sense of them.

What you can do is hope that 2017 will be a better year. Certainty seems a bit passé these days, as the UK voted for Brexit, but not what kind of Brexit, and there are people in the United States fearing for what their next President might have for them in the coming weeks. You can do all you can to make 2017 the best year for yourself, but you hope it can be a better year for all.  The one discouraging thing about hope is that I thought it invoked a feeling of trust, only for my dictionary to relegate that to a secondary meaning, listing it as “archaic.”

Therefore, in 2017, I hope that:

…people prove my dictionary wrong.

…I keep a diary for every day, even on those rare days when nothing really happened.

…people remember that populism works both ways – if your leader does not work for you, you can get them out

…Brexit is a success for everyone, because it has to be, and the bed we have to lie in is not too hard, and not too soft

…the next time we have to vote for something, we are given the implementation plan beforehand

…people stop using the Nazis as a comparison for anything they don’t like – overuse means you start looking for something worse which, hopefully, doesn’t exist

…people get bored of talking about the political “Left” and “Right,” as it’s too simplistic, and too dismissive a label to slap across people

…the following hashtags are used online: #brexitbed #notaunicorn #trumpmeansfart #wiggledontgiggle #pumpthechump

…people make up their minds on what public toilets transgender people can use, before I piss on their shoes.

…the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland remains as the United Kingdom, the home of the BBC, the NHS, Penguin Books, free art galleries, grumbling about the weather, queueing, and unidentified items in the bagging area.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR INSERT NAME [34]

One of the few songs to which everyone knows the words, “Happy Birthday to You” is a song we are seemingly stuck with now, being a very quick and easy way to mark a moment in time, and which can be sung in exactly the same way no matter how much you like or dislike the person to which you are singing.

The song began as “Good Morning to All,” written by two teacher sisters, Mildred and Patty Hill (yes, it took two people), to be sung in class at the beginning of the school day. The “Happy Birthday” appeared organically when people wanted to use the tune for other things, and were eventually written down – the piano arrangement, with extra verse (“How old are you now?”), credited to two further people, was published in 1935, over forty years after the Hills published their original. The song entered the hands of music publishers Warner Chappell Music in 1988, who enforced their copyright to charge millions of dollars in royalty payments.

To make it clear, yes, you can use “Happy Birthday to You” for free now. In the United States, a court case was brought against Warner Chappell by the makers of a documentary about the song, whose intentions were to “liberate” the song. Pedantry won the day on 28^th June 2016, declaring the song was in the public domain, by which point repayments to licensees had already been announced. In the European Union, “Happy Birthday to You” becomes a public domain song on 31^st December 2016, as copyright law cuts off seventy years after Patty Hill died.

However, what does this mean for the other birthday songs, like the Beatles’ “Birthday,” which is addressed to the listener? There’s also “Happy Birthday” by Altered Images, “Birthday” by Katy Perry, and “Happy Birthday” by Stevie Wonder, even if the intent of that song was for Martin Luther King’s birthday to be made into a US public holiday, which eventually happened. If you can sing the original for free, why now pay for the competitors?

The answer is because they are better. “Happy Birthday to You” makes me think of the routine Billy Connolly once did about how “God Save the Queen” can be hard work, suggesting we hum the theme tune to “The Archers” instead. What is worse, the original tune to “God Save the Queen/King,” when written in 1745, originally had more flourishes, which have been flattened out over time, and could do with being put back.

If you are going to sing a song for someone’s birthday, you want to sing it like you mean it, but if the song can’t help you with that, you should choose a different song. The tradition of singing “Happy Birthday to You” is only a hundred years old, so a new tradition can easily be started – even “For He’s/She’s/They’re a Jolly Good Fellow” is a good start.