Message to Keith Olberman: I'd LOVE to watch your show, but

[Redstone]

all that flashing, spinning, disappearing / reappearing shit on the screen would give me a siezure. Good God, it's like looking at a Jefferson Airplane concert in 1967.

Could you PLEASE tone it down so we can pay attention to watching and listening?

Thank you.

Redstone

[LSparkle]

1. Yeah, and get rid of ODDBALL ...

I think of Keith as an oasis of maturity and sanity in the midst of the CableTalk desert but occasionally I feel let down.

[Redstone]

2. Who's Oddball?

Redstone

[LSparkle]

6. "Oddball" is a segment covering "wacky, offbeat" stories

that just don't fit in with the serious tone of the rest of the show. It feels like recess in the middle of school but ... I'm enjoying the lecture, so don't make me go play, ok?

[Redstone]

10. Aha. I see your point. But I can't even watch the serious content

because of the producers' mania in making sure that NOT ONE pixel on the screen stays still.

Same with our local news. Can't watch it. CNN? Can't watch it. Why can't the TV folks figure out that we want to SEE THE PEOPLE WHO ARE TALKING, not a load of swooshing nonsense?

Redstone

[mod mom]

20. or better yet-baseball (steroids!)

[gizmo1979]

34. I like oddball!

[William769]

3. Great just the way it is.

Seperates him from the rest among other rhings.

[Redstone]

7. But do they really need to have EVERY DAMN PIXEL of the screen moving?

Seems we'd all be able to pay better attention without all that distracting crap.

I simply cannot watch it. Much as I'd like to.

Redstone

[madokie]

15. try as I, listen not watch, but sometimes thats hard to do, watching

[OwnedByFerrets]

9. I love Keith.....

and would change nothing except to nix the Oddball Extreme Edition that he does once in awhile (like tonite).:crazy:

[newyawker99]

32. Hi OwnedByFerrets!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[dogday]

4. Keith Olbermann is about the only show that

tells it like it is... It is great and should stay that way......

[Redstone]

8. I did not say it wasn't a great show. I said I can't watch it, because

of all the fucking moving crap around the frames that I'm trying to watch.

Redstone

[malaise]

11. Then don't watch

just listen

[Gabi Hayes]

12. I often listen through the VCR/Tuner, and have the TV screen off

can you do that? if it's something you want to see, you can flip it on

[Redstone]

16. Now I feel ike an utter moron. Of COURSE I cold just turn th

screen brightness all the way down and just listen.

Duh.

Thanks to you and "malaise" for pointing out what would have been screamingly obvious to anyone with half a brain, which apparently I don't have, preferring to bitch and moan instead.

I'm NOT being sarcastic here. I do feel like an idiot.

(But I still think that all the moving crap on EVERY television news show has gotten WAY out of hand. almost as bad as trying to watch a baseball game.)

Redstone

[Gabi Hayes]

17. couldn't agree more about the bells and whistles. MY peeve is the

assine WHOOSH/WHANG/FOONG sounds they have to make to introduce their spiff

THAT you can't get rid of by blanking the screen

I really hate that stuff

[Redstone]

21. ARGH! I had to shut off the sound when Fox had the World Series;

those God Damn swooshes were making me nauseous. I could not agree with you more.

Why can't they just put the damn show on without all the unnecessary audio AND video crap?

Redstone

[Gabi Hayes]

23. fox is the WORST when it comes to that, and just about everthing else,

for that matter

cept the Simpsons

[Justice Is Comin]

31. I couldn't agree with you more.

That scrolling shit on the bottom of the screen drives me absolutely bonkers. Then there's things twisting, flashing, spinning, rotating, gyrating. They tell you everything on the screen but the last birth at the zoo.

A third of the screen is taken up by their stupid graphics and library of informational shit. Pretty soon you'll need binoculars to find a picture. It'll be the size of a postage stamp.

You almost have to watch C-Span to find a station anymore that doesn't give you motion sickness headache.

I wish they would go back to the days when television had a picture on it and that's all. And they didn't have zoom lenses that these amateur cameramen think is for getting pictures of peoples tonsils. God, that's another thing that drives me crazy.

[redwitch]

24. I find it bothersome as well.

It gives me a headache. I don't know who started the current fad of having the camera jerk about non stop, but it IS annoying.

[Gabi Hayes]

25. MTV, then NYPD Blue

[malaise]

28. You're not an idiot

There are way too many distractions on TV.

[Quakerfriend]

5. I'm glad to hear that someone else feels this way!

I do tend flip back and forth to avoid this crap.

[Gabi Hayes]

13. hahahahaaaaa....reaming OReilly again

Fox down 24 percent
MSNBC up 41 percent in key demographic

ha ha

great segment

[carolinalady]

14. You know what drives me crazy?

It is a small insignificant thing, but I focus on it whenever I watch him. When he does a split screen with a guest, there are to circles with short lines protruding from it at the top and the bottom of the screen in-between the two pictures. It drives me insane!

[Gabi Hayes]

18. har....I thought I was nuts. I've never even notice it

I'll be looking from now on

[carolinalady]

19. And it will haunt you. I mean why do they do that? I have never

seen that on any split screen on any other show. Sometimes I can not even concentrate on what is being said for wondering about it.

[Redstone]

22. Well, here's his chance to forge a brave new direction in television:

just put the damn show on.

No gratuitious swooshing video. No gratuitous swooshing audio.

Just put the damn show on.

Redstone

[Catherine Vincent]

26. If the visual is too loud, you're too old.

:evilgrin:

[NightOwwl]

27. You got that right...

Anyone born after 1970 has the attention span of a flea. Gotta keep those stimulating visuals going or you lose the viewer.

[fujiyama]

29. Sounds like

the "Fox-News-ification" of the news media.

I remember soon after th Iraq war, I was meeting some old buddies up at a bar, and we were talking about how nutty the Fox News graphics were. One of my friends had just got a degree in computer animation and was saying it would have been fun to animate the crazy eagle with missiles flying around or whatever the hell it was doing. But he said as much fun as it would have been, he couldn't have stomached the idea of working at Fox News.

I like the Colbert Report's begining because it mocks Fox perfectly. Then again, Olberman may be doing the same...It's harder to say since it is on MSNBC.

[NJCher]

30. those graphics were innovated by Fox News and for a reason

The moving, swooshy stuff, to use your apt terms, Redstone, were innovated by Fox News. Now all the news programs are using them. How disgusting is that? Time for some new tricks, TV people.

Also, those elements are there for a reason. Their purpose is to foster an air of unreality, a woozy, sick sort of feeling. Why? Because that's just how they want you to feel so you can in turn feel gratitude to manly man GWB for saving you from terrists.

Well, at least that's the way it was set up in the beginning with Fox. Now that the Repuke House 'O Cards is falling, it just accentuates the out-of-control mess gwb has so expertly created. How funny that they are the victim of their own media innovation.

The corporate ad people who created the Fox look took a cue from the gambling people. Ever notice how casino decor has an air of unreality? It's to disassociate you from your reasoning process and break down your barriers toward throwing every last cent you own on he casino table.




Cher

[LouisianaLiberal]

33. "Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television"

Jerry Mander (yes, that was his name) wrote this book sometime in the seventies, long before NYPD Blue and the current lot of whirling graphics. He called the frequent changing of camera angles "technical events", designed to keep the viewer from consciously engaging with ideas being presented, and forcing the viewer to remain engaged passively. How far we've come.

He was ahead of his time. These "technical events" have evolved to contain, in some cases, more information than the substance of the program. And by "information" I don't mean an idea or plot to be considered by the viewer, but the number of "events" that require only passive participation, and that make it almost impossible for the average viewer to actively participate in the content.

I no longer have the book, so my comments on his theory may be a little fuzzy.