Television.
You may not notice it, but every weekday morning the once-fat-now-thin weatherman Al Roker uses this phrase 8 times during the Today show.
This exact phase.
Twice every hour. Once at about 8 minutes past, and again about 38 minutes past the hour.
It's a cue. A signal to the local affiliates to < INSERT LOCAL WEATHER HERE >.
Its rare for a television or radio program to use audible cues because these days the object interpreting the cue is almost always a machine. But there are some exceptions, and the Today show is one.
The Today show producers either cannot or choose not to time their news segments to be exactly the same every day. Thus, the actual hit for the local weather varies. (You'll notice the "about" in the paragraph above). Hence the audible cue. Although they could just as easily put an inaudible hit into the live feed for the machines that make your tv so pretty, but that is a different matter entirely.
NPR uses some audible cues as well, although theirs are typically less creative. For instance, every NPR newscast starts at 1 minute past the hour (or half hour), and at exactly 4 minutes past the hour you will hear the announcer say something like "This is NPR News." Then, depending on what part of the country you live in, you will either her local news headline or more national/business news.
Back to the Today show. A bit of tradition. You may hear Katie or Matt occasionally say "but first, this is Today on NBC." This actually used to be a signal to local stations that a local commercial break was upcoming. It has been replaced by an inaudible cue, but the words remain as an homage to the wonderfulness of broadcast television or something like that.
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3 comments:
Well we have the same affectation in British tv -- probably the only area where our tv operates similarly.
Except after the "and now the news, travel and weather where you're waking up today", there plays a five second sting -- bit of a cleaner device perhaps to opt out to the regions from.
It's like a hilarious task of theirs to get other people to say the words, as if people care at all.
On one network, if the regional centre fails, the ident stays up for 3 minutes of looped theme music approaching 15 years old, and on the other network it would back up to the local London news [thrillingly]. If that fails, it goes to the South.
Other programmes that require opts have inaudible or digitally triggered cues, but they aren't often very clean, sometimes involving an opt within an opt and the timing [especially on digital] goes to shit.
What a geeky entry you made today, I just had to reply.
We have bad digital hits here too. Ours happen when cable televison stations add local commercials to programing.
You always see a second or two of the ad that was suppossed to be covered up while the machine reacts to the signal. Very distracting.
Geeky huh? Well at least I'm not whining about how cold it is here today (-5 F)-- you can actually feel your ears begin to tear away from your head.
So you think I have too much Iron?
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