Wednesday, April 04, 2012
Free entertainment
Been struck in various places over the last few days about the merit or otherwise of the provision of free entertainment in public places, entertainment which come in the form of flickering pictures and noise or just noise. TB often offers the unusual combination of flickering pictures from one machine and noise from another, a compromise which appears to satisfy both those who like to watch the racing while they drink and those who like to have some music.
Generally speaking, I find both a bit irritating. Depending on mood and context, one can often block the noise but I find the flickering much harder to deal with, even if it is at the periphery of the visual field. One really needs to have one's back to it, not always convenient.
Particularly irritating are those small waiting rooms you often get at the bottom of big office blocks furnished with large televisions. OK so the things are cheap and have become a bit of a must have amongst the office management fraternity, but why they should think that the average waiter would rather watch the box than read the paper, prepare for the coming meeting or just doze is beyond me.
Some shops don't do badly either. Once upon a time it just used to be shops catering for young people who played loud music to scare away older people. And some shops used to intersperse the music with spoken word advertisements, a particularly tiresome genre. I even recall some tale about supermarkets supplementing the oxygen in the air, which taken together with jolly martial music, stimulated the buying buds. But now even quite decent shops do it, M&S for example, a shop which used to be above such stuff.
And then there is always South West Trains. Once they discovered that they could pipe announcements into carriages there was no stopping them. And over and above the central computer generated guff, they even gave the guards discretion to use the thing as they saw fit - and some guards are quite keen. This for material which 99% of passengers find neither diverting nor informative.
On the other hand, I remember having a chat with the keeper of a small hotel about it, one of those small hotels with a big empty breakfast room. The keeper explained that she had experimented and found that, on the whole, customers found silence in a big empty room a bit oppressive. They liked a bit of light music, light both in the sense of easy going and in that of being quiet, in the background. Such music also served to cover the conversation of others if there were more than two people in the room; customers also liking a bit of privacy.
There is also the angle that sometimes one finds some conversations in waiting rooms really irritating. Perhaps one is waiting for a bit of dental treatment and some loud gent. is banging on ad nauseam about how his last experience of this particular treatment (as luck would have it) went completely pear shaped. Completely oblivious in his desire to sound off that his soundings might not be to everybody else's taste and with his interlocutor far too polite to tell him to can it. A bit of noise can mask such things a bit; a case of two wrongs making a right for once.
PS: made it onto Epsom Common for the first time for a few weeks the other day. All the way around Christ Church and back, a trip somewhat marred by the discovery that the Chain Saw Volunteers have been at it again since I was last on this stretch of the all weather path. Big trees, little trees, all sorts. But I don't suppose I am going to find the energy to put in a complaint to their forthcoming annual meeting on 24th April (see http://www.epsomcommon.org.uk/). Perhaps some concerned reader will act on my behalf.
Generally speaking, I find both a bit irritating. Depending on mood and context, one can often block the noise but I find the flickering much harder to deal with, even if it is at the periphery of the visual field. One really needs to have one's back to it, not always convenient.
Particularly irritating are those small waiting rooms you often get at the bottom of big office blocks furnished with large televisions. OK so the things are cheap and have become a bit of a must have amongst the office management fraternity, but why they should think that the average waiter would rather watch the box than read the paper, prepare for the coming meeting or just doze is beyond me.
Some shops don't do badly either. Once upon a time it just used to be shops catering for young people who played loud music to scare away older people. And some shops used to intersperse the music with spoken word advertisements, a particularly tiresome genre. I even recall some tale about supermarkets supplementing the oxygen in the air, which taken together with jolly martial music, stimulated the buying buds. But now even quite decent shops do it, M&S for example, a shop which used to be above such stuff.
And then there is always South West Trains. Once they discovered that they could pipe announcements into carriages there was no stopping them. And over and above the central computer generated guff, they even gave the guards discretion to use the thing as they saw fit - and some guards are quite keen. This for material which 99% of passengers find neither diverting nor informative.
On the other hand, I remember having a chat with the keeper of a small hotel about it, one of those small hotels with a big empty breakfast room. The keeper explained that she had experimented and found that, on the whole, customers found silence in a big empty room a bit oppressive. They liked a bit of light music, light both in the sense of easy going and in that of being quiet, in the background. Such music also served to cover the conversation of others if there were more than two people in the room; customers also liking a bit of privacy.
There is also the angle that sometimes one finds some conversations in waiting rooms really irritating. Perhaps one is waiting for a bit of dental treatment and some loud gent. is banging on ad nauseam about how his last experience of this particular treatment (as luck would have it) went completely pear shaped. Completely oblivious in his desire to sound off that his soundings might not be to everybody else's taste and with his interlocutor far too polite to tell him to can it. A bit of noise can mask such things a bit; a case of two wrongs making a right for once.
PS: made it onto Epsom Common for the first time for a few weeks the other day. All the way around Christ Church and back, a trip somewhat marred by the discovery that the Chain Saw Volunteers have been at it again since I was last on this stretch of the all weather path. Big trees, little trees, all sorts. But I don't suppose I am going to find the energy to put in a complaint to their forthcoming annual meeting on 24th April (see http://www.epsomcommon.org.uk/). Perhaps some concerned reader will act on my behalf.
# posted by Jim @ 12:50 AM 
