Editorial: Why reality television sounds so darned exciting

Duh-duh! Lesina Nakhid-Schuster is joined by surprise extra single woman Lily McManus on the match-making reality show The Bachelorette. Photo / Matt Klitscher

Opinion

EDITORIAL

An old newsroom saying goes, and who knows who first uttered it: "There's no such thing as a boring story. Just boring writing."

In making TV shows more compelling than the sometimes mundane reality, the use of background music subliminally steers our senses into making us believe what we otherwise probably wouldn't.

As anyone who has seen an Alfred Hitchcock movie knows, screeching violins inject horror into a scene. And as we discover in our story "Don't believe your ears" today, the very same principle (and, even the piece of music) is now routinely rolled out on reality TV shows to emphasise the drama.

It's the same when the stirring piano music rises to accompany that moment when the dowdy old spinster turns out to have golden tonsils (cue stunned show host at the side of stage).

For those few who are annoyed by overlay of over-the-top sounds, musicologist Dr Gregory Camp reminds us it's not new. Musical scores were influencing audiences well before moving pictures morphed from novelty to the multibillion-dollar mass entertainments they are today.

"Before there was any dialogue in the films — because they hadn't figured out how to technically sync it up yet — music was used as a primary mode of communication, and that connects into the earlier history of opera and ballet."

Going by the ratings, it would appear the vast majority of us are happy to have our hearts racing or melting as the wedding couples meet for the very first time, or as the clock ticks down on the elimination bake-off.

Most of us would be well aware it's part of the ride to love or loath characters as the soundtrack leads us to and it's nowhere near as irksome as other devices in the reality TV realm - such as recapping every other non-event until the recaps, are themselves, recapped.

Ultimately, it's up to us to discern whether what we are watching is really as the sound-bed implies, and that's part of the fun.

As the old advertising saying goes: "There's no such thing as a boring product. Just boring marketing."