Sound

I found Rick Altman’s paper on television sound to be most compelling this week. It seems as though, in the way American’s “watch” television today, sound has become the most important component.
This is all because, when the set is on, it is only being watched anywhere from 55 to 76 percent of the time, on average (569). When the television sound cues the “viewers” to return to the screen, they likely will, and then after the event subsides, they return to what they were doing. While this is all great, it still seems as though the television can get its point across without having its “viewers” actually look at it. Because “ratings count operating TV sets rather than viewers” (569-570) and “attention time is not limited to eye contact time” (569), Altman seems to suggest that A.C. Nielsen needs to revise the way they assess ratings. The ratings, however, no matter how they are created, are what drive the industry, so the networks only aim to keep TVs turned on (570).
I think even this is a fine way for the television to transmit information. Viewing need not be the key component, so that television becomes a sort of radio with optional visual content. On the other hand, I wonder if networks have come across ways to get the television left on even when people have gone out of earshot entirely, or left the building. This would be a strange way to accrue ratings that would, by their own merit, bolster the network’s popularity. Perhaps television would have taken a different direction if A. C. Nielsen were not the premiere source of ratings and viewing time were the actual measure for them.