[bryantm3]

i was having a discussion with my dad a few minutes ago, and the television was on, and we had to go turn it off because it was so disrupting. he said "i can't stand the television going on like that, maybe it's because i'm old," and then, i said "well, dad, the television has gotten so loud and disrupting in the last twenty years, same thing with radio." and i've noticed this happening for a while. for example, in station IDs, the DJs shout instead of talk and have loud annoying fast paced music in the background that they're shouting over, and it's like they're competing with each other to see how loud they can be. why not turn the music off and talk? listen to casey kasem's program from the 80s and early 90s- he just talked, he didn't shout over music, and he had some of the best ratings. at the end of television programs, they don't even show the credits anymore, they jam them over on the side of the screen to fill the second half up with some guy screaming about the new program on tonight, or selling some junk. what if i don't want to see that? in addition, watch cartoons now compared to cartoons in even 1998. for example, the fairly odd parents on nickelodeon consistantly has dialogue- you can't even count to five before someone speaks or something explodes. hey arnold would be the converse to that, in that it wasn't necessarily fast paced, but was a great cartoon.

does the media market just think that we're so inattentive that they have to scream at us to keep us in our seats? personally i find it insulting that they have to dumb everything down expecting everyone to have extremely short attention spans, and to be honest, it's downright annoying to be listening to a song on the radio and instead of a smooth transition to the next song, they have to come in and shout.

am i alone in this?