Cover(t) versions

"The idea of automatic volume control isn't new, but the way SRS Truvolume processes audio by utilising the science of Psychoacoustics to preserve dynamic range is. Typical automatic gain controllers have a devastating effect on audio quality, SRS Truvolume doesn't and keeps all audio sounding natural...", which I am quoting with permission, comes from a site that is offering hefty prizes in a prose contest where the topic is, of course, the spiking of volume in audio/visual appliances. "...we really want to know what people have to say about annoying volume fluctuations while watching TV, whether it be serious or funny, fiction or non-fiction," is what Allen H. Gharapetian, vice-president of marketing at SRS Labs, said in the blurb for the contest.

As far as I can tell, this system is the state-of-the-art version of the old-fashioned 'transformers' that used to be placed in front of religious effigies and left on 24/7 since the bulb had been manufactured so that it could not short-circuit, and was of very low wattage.

In Malta, this problem is treated somewhat more casually. People who use equipment that has no remote controls to adjust volume between the speech (or, occasionally, mumbling) of certain presenters and any guests, and the records or musical interludes, find the exercise of having to do this manually, highly irritating. Sometimes, this leads one to switch to a channel where the level of sound is more constant - or opt to listen to a cassette or a CD, which would have no such variations.

Sending e-mails to, or calling the management of different stations will only elicit the same response: "Our technicians and engineers are looking into the problem." Sometimes, one is told that gauges and meters are not indicating any discrepancy between words and music, and yet there it is. This is similar to when one calls an internet service provider to complain that there is no internet link - and they tell you "from this end, it appears to be connected".

• The can opened by the person(s) who decided to hold a fashion shoot inside a cemetery has now become a dog's dinner.

Indeed, the members of the group that follow this programme on Facebook were treated to a long, long letter in which it was explained that there was a permit for it; that the authorities were fully aware of what was happening, and co-operated fully ("accommodating" was the word used) unto providing a "custodian" throughout the shoot; that the 25 people who wrote posts and letters in the local press to complain are narrow-minded; that the hoi polloi are bereft of artistic comprehension, and so forth.

The writer of this letter seems to think that a permit, and good intentions ("it was never our intention to offend, shock or hurt anyone by this") can alter the fact that a burial place is, for all religions and not just the Catholic one, sacred ground by association - and that therefore, it is anathema to hold certain activities there.

A cemetery is not just a "different location" as any other, despite it being an "extremely interesting visual location" (sic). The fact that "viewership statistics prove year after year that there is an enthusiastic audience..." is also unimportant.

Inevitably, the writer saw it fit to compare and contrast the clips from Venere with those of other productions, also shot at cemeteries. This, again, is no justification; especially since there is the insinuation that it was the female models that raised people's hackles, and that the reaction might have been different had it been male models doing the posing.

In last Sunday's column, I never intimated that tombs were desecrated. I just said that it was utterly beyond the pale and tasteless, and I reiterate this.

What is it that makes people who sit at a control desk, or behind a microphone, think they know everything?

Whatever happened to the idea that each news-script would pass through the hands of a proof-reader and editor before being read on air? Spare me, please, the platitudes that this is a fast world and that deadlines must be met. If this were the case, there would be no reason to repeat the same bulletins, complete with fluff and mispronunciations, throughout the day, without updates, even though the story may have undergone changes.

• This week, we had someone tell us that the use of biodiesel is being encouraged locally because it was "less harmless to the environment". Then we had the disc jockey who passed the same risqué comments, almost word for word, two days running, and the one who implied that a nickelodeon and a jukebox are the same thing.

It is understood that sometimes people need dash off to the bathroom or for a cup of coffee, and that is when they play three-in-a row. However, it jars when they give the wrong names of the records they would have just played.

Incidentally - it is not 'Betty' Davis, but 'Bette'.

• It would be interesting to find out whether the rules for covert advertising apply to tele-novelas as they are supposed to do across the board.

Advertising local products is fine with me. Yet I fail to understand why a (local) yoghurt pot was covered in (semi-transparent) paper when it was used for a recipe in a children's programme - but a packet of (local) milk was placed on the table by a youth, in clear view of the cameras, in a particular episode, as are other products in other series.

television@timesofmalta.com