The incredible shrinking sound bite It's not just a modern problem - and may not be such a bad thing after all
By Craig Fehrman January 2, 2011 In the summer of 1992, just as George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot were gearing up for their presidential race, CBS announced a new policy for its nightly news. Starting immediately, the network would not use any sound bite - that is, any footage of a candidate speaking uninterrupted - that lasted less than 30 seconds. CBS was making this change in response to some troubling news: A professor at the University of California had just published research showing that the length of the average TV sound bite had dropped dramatically, from 43 seconds in the 1968 presidential election to a mere nine seconds in the 1988 election. And this drop had led to lots of hand-wringing - from professors, from journalists, and from politicians themselves. "If you couldn't say it in less than 10 seconds," Michael Dukakis complained about the previous campaign, "it wasn't heard because it wasn't aired." And so CBS, the network of Murrow and Cronkite, pitched its new extended-sound-bite policy as "an experiment" and "a public service." It was also a savvy bit of marketing, as the network's first segment, which centered on a 34-second clip of Perot, earned plenty of praise. If you've watched any political coverage since 1992, you know what happened: CBS's experiment failed. This week, as Congress's 112th session begins, the shrinking sound bite stands as a rare enemy of Republicans and Democrats alike. Whether running for president of the United States or for city council, politicians can count on seeing their words broken into ever smaller and more fragmentary bits. You might debate whom to blame - asked about nine-second sound bites, one TV executive replied, "the politicians started it" - but you can't dispute the trend. In recent presidential elections, the average TV sound bite has dropped to a tick under eight seconds. A shorter, dumber, and shriller political discourse, it seems, has become another hazard of modern life. ... http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2011/01/02/the_incredible_shrinking_sound_bite/ _______________________________________________ Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
