Sir Michael Lyons answers questions from Radio 4 listeners
Sir Michael Lyons is the outgoing Chair of the BBC Trust. He appeared on Radio 4's weekly phone-in Call You & Yours today to answer questions from licence fee-payers. Listen again to the programme here and leave a comment below.
Steve Bowbrick is Editor of About the BBC
- You & Yours is BBC Radio 4's weekday consumer affairs programme: Monday to Friday at 1200. Tuesday's programme is devoted to a phone-in, Call You & Yours.
- You & Yours also has a blog.
Comment number 1.
At 23:36 27th Apr 2011, kanteleman wrote:I listened with particular interest to the background noise issue. I mean music and other sound effects such as for example a loud "swooshing" noise as the programme jumps irritatingly from one brief shot to another. The fact that the BBC programme makers are encouraged/tolerated in the use of many, many different added sounds is amongst other things, very insensitive to people who are hard of hearing. It is well known that background noise clutter makes the lives of hard of hearing people stressful and serves to exclude them from many social circumstances. Yet in full possesion of that knowledge here are the BBC continuing to add this confusing miscellany of quite purposeless noises. I am 73 and have just thoroughly enjoyed watching the superb "The crimson petal and the white" but there were many portions of the dialogue which were unintellible for me simply because I could not distinguish the words above the sound effects and musical background. We hard of hearing viewers pay exactly the same licence fee and have every right to expect to be able to determine the dialogue as well as seeing the images!
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Comment number 2.
At 10:43 28th Apr 2011, Kit Green wrote:1. At 23:36pm 27th Apr 2011, kanteleman wrote:
I am 73 and have just thoroughly enjoyed watching the superb "The crimson petal and the white" but there were many portions of the dialogue which were unintellible for me simply because I could not distinguish the words above the sound effects and musical background. We hard of hearing viewers pay exactly the same licence fee and have every right to expect to be able to determine the dialogue as well as seeing the images!
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Whilst I sympathise with your feelings on this I must point out that those of us with reasonably good hearing appreciate a rich soundtrack to films and dramas that can add a great deal to the enjoyment through mood setting music and sound effects. As Hitchcock is reputed to have said, "The sound is half the picture".
The licence fee does pay for a very good subtitling service. I do not need these subtitles (so far!) but do not resent the spending of licence fee money on them.
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