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The Classic Squeeze Play
13 years ago
General
"We gonna do a song that you've never heard before..."
-- Otis Redding, "Good to Me" Live at the Whiskey.There's a lot of music out there on TV that you've never heard. Trust me, I'd never heard it before either. Oh it's there, or it's supposed to be there, but network greed has taken it away from you.
Every time I watch Grey's Anatomy, either on the web or on demand, I am reminded that while Grey's does not have an opening theme, it does have a closing theme. A quirky, toe-tapping little wind-up-musicbox number. More than one, too. I have never heard that second one but I immediately like it. That's got some smokin' soul to it, right there.
How many times did we watch House, MD and grove along to Massive Attack on the opening. Anyone realize that there's a closing theme for House? Oddly enough, it's used as the opening theme too, outside of the United States. Seems Teardrop may only be licensed for use in the US.
Bones, Bones again, The Finder, Fringe, Glee (what can I say, Fox has good shows)... all these quirky, dramatic, playful, awesome 30-second shots. Why don't we usually hear these themes on the TV?
Why? The squeeze! Yes that's right, the part where the network shoves the end credit roll aside to breathlessly tell you about what's happening next (or next week) on the channel. Or just flat-out re-work the credits into the bottom eighth of the screen so they can run a promo. When was the last time you saw a real, honest-to-goodness credit roll for your favorite prime-time show? I can't remember any at all!
And I doubt it's gonna change any time soon. Because, you know... it's not like the people who actually made the show possible deserve any prominent recognition, right?
Speaking of the squeeze, when TBS pulls that stunt where they show you the opening credits of Friends off to the side while starting the actual episode in the main window, they save, what... a minute or so? But you don't get that minute back, do you? The show doesn't end at 4:59, it ends at 5:00 (with another overlap into the next show). How do they spend that extra minute?
Mmm hmm. They throw another ad at you. As my supervisor once said, "What? How do you spell that? M-O-N-E-Y?"
P.S. Best thing Friends ever did was run the tail of the show under the end credits. That guaranteed they couldn't be squeezed out, edited, sped up or otherwise tampered with in syndication. Too bad they never dreamed money-hungry networks would go so far as to edit the opening titles into a separate clip and play it off to the side.
Have you noticed that a lot of credits (squeezed or not) have a rather erratic pace. They start slow, then fly past you and then slow up again for the end? The speed of the credits is inversely proportional to the importance of the people displayed. They start out with actors, very important. Then comes production... the whole crew in the blink of an eye. Then they slow up again for the producer/director and come to a crawl for the sponsors.
I've actually started referring to that middle section of the credits as "flyover territory", since you essentially fly past them quickly and don't really pay attention, much like flyover country. Now, should I be happy or sad that my work in television would put me squarely in that flyover territory of the credits?
I also found it very strange to see advertisments for drugs. We prohibit direct-to-consumer pharmacutical advertising over here, on the grounds that doctors spend many years in training to make the best possible medical discussions, and a patient who watches a five-minute presentation will still be ignorant, but now left with the delusion that they are suddenly more qualified than their doctor.
When you're coming from a non-advertising place to a place that grew up with it, it can be jarring... but you pay license fees directly for your TV so you don't have to put up with ads, while we don't pay for (basic) TV, it's subsidized by the companies that want to advertise to us. You get used to it, and can tune it out, or use it as a break to go to the bathroom or get a snack (which is why commercials are SO MUCH LOUDER than the TV shows. They assume you're not going to be in front of the TV.)
Or you can get a tivo and skip past them entirely. :P
Any question that begins 'why do they' or 'why don't they' is invariably answered by 'money'. That's why syndicated shows are shortened, little bits chopped out so they can squeeze in another ad or two in the same running time. Good Eats having moved to the cooking channel from food network is a bad example of this. You can tell they've sped up some of the parts, and there are things glaringly missing. Not vital to a recipe, but little funny bits that (if you've seen the show a bunch of times) you miss when they're gone. Or turning him into a teleporter... instead of walking from this end of the kitchen to that end, he picks up a spoon here and POW! He's in front of the stove and stirring something.