Mumbling actors on TV

[anneed]

I know this is a sure sign of getting older but really, the mumbling on TV is driving me mad. I've resorted to using sub titles for shows like Shetland (the accent is partly to blame here) and the latest version of Jamaica Inn. If anyone tells me they can make out what the uncle is saying without them I'll be amazed. Even lip readers would struggle as I could hardly see his mouth moving!

[Silver_Shiney]

Seem you weren't the only one struggling! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-27116881

[anneed]

Yes, it's just been on the BBC news that they've had hundreds of complaints about Jamaica Inn. Will anyone listen?

[david63]

Yes, it's just been on the BBC news that they've had hundreds of complaints about Jamaica Inn. Will anyone listen?

If they are mumbling, then even if they are listening they will not hear

[Boris+]

Hmmmm, and then if anyone does listen - will they understand?

Em

[emjay45]

I think there was a problem but only in certain areas. We recorded it and had no problem.My son is deaf so we have to have the subtitles on the television, I have got so used to them I can't watch without them now.

[Dark Knight]

apparently , it was a technical fault with the boroadcast

[gfwgfw]

Spot on DN

The Beeb has apologized for a rare technical malfunction with their sound desk

But . . .

Still the world's top Broadcasting Emporium

I just lub the BBC, even better cus I am now a serious ole **** my licence is FREE

The Grateful Giant of Cerne Abbas

[Quizzical Bob]

apparently , it was a technical fault with the boroadcast

Yeah, right. They've got previous.

[Gill W]

It's not only the sound, in some programmes the lighting is so bad you can't see what's going on

[ITWA Travel Writer]

I can’t help remembering the good times of the late sixties, when most families up hear in the snowy north would sit round their battery radios to listen to one of my travelogues on Radio Scotland’s ‘Tonight’ program.

No bad sound or technical problems then.

Just good times, good techies and of course me!!

Listen to the radio, even today folks and don’t be a slave to John Logie Baird’s goggle box.

[anneed]

Well, I think the sound was better by the last episode of Jamaica Inn but I still needed the sub titles for Uncle Joss.

And one more observation - the long, loose locks sported by Mary and her aunt. No 'decent' Victorian woman, especially a married one, would have gone out in public without an up do! With all that wind and rain going on it didn't help their diction to have to speak through mouthfuls of wet, straggly hair.

I thought it was otherwise a pretty good if brutal adaptation.

[Mervyn and Trish]

It frustrates me as an ex BBC employee. Technical facilities improve all the time, but it seems training doesn't.

Apart from mumbling, which seems a regular problem (we gave up watching the last series of Ripper Street because it was so difficult to follow), my biggest irritation is the poor control of sound levels.

In my day (yes, I know, makes me sound an old duffer, but hey ho) if I got it even slightly wrong on my self op radio sound desk the chief engineer would be through the door and down on me like a ton of bricks.

These days they seem content to let us do our own sound balancing at home. Perhaps that's what the people in charge now think a remote control is for!

[ITWA Travel Writer]

You may sound like an old duffer, but I assure you aren’t.

However, you do highlight the fact that we now live in a different world with very different standards.

It is not until something goes wrong that we realise that all this hi tech mumbo jumbo is no excuse for solid training and supervision.

At the ‘Beachwood ‘studio in Aberdeen we were more scared of the chief engineer than of our producer. All my travelogues’ were recorded, so they were strictly controlled by the chief engineer. The same applied in ‘Gibraltar Radio’ and ‘Forces Radio Sharjah’ where I operated my own sound desk live. If there were any complaints about your broadcasts, you were carpeted in front of the board. No namby-pamby stuff there. Muck it up to often and you were fired!!

[Silver_Shiney]

You may sound like an old duffer, but I assure you aren’t.

However, you do highlight the fact that we now live in a different world with very different standards.

It is not until something goes wrong that we realise that all this hi tech mumbo jumbo is no excuse for solid training and supervision.

At the ‘Beachwood ‘studio in Aberdeen we were more scared of the chief engineer than of our producer. All my travelogues’ were recorded, so they were strictly controlled by the chief engineer. The same applied in ‘Gibraltar Radio’ and ‘Forces Radio Sharjah’ where I operated my own sound desk live. If there were any complaints about your broadcasts, you were carpeted in front of the board. No namby-pamby stuff there. Muck it up to often and you were fired!!

There's a small coincidence - I did my own sound during my shows on Radio 65 on Masirah

[ITWA Travel Writer]

There's a small coincidence - I did my own sound during my shows on Radio 65 on Masirah

Alan, it really is a small world.

Even though Masirah is an island, it was still very much desert. It must have been all that sand, camels and Peter O’ Toole, which gave us a hankering for the open seas.

I was with Forces Broadcasting in the late 1960’s and in Sharjah in 1968. Can you remember who the Forces Broadcasting station manager was in Masirah then?

[Silver_Shiney]

Sorry, John, I was there in '76 and Radio 65 was purely an RAF affair. The BBC had the British Eastern Radio Station just outside the perimeter fence and the staff lived in the Sergeants' Mess, but we had no contact with them.