Emotional Cue: TV News Using Music to Accompany Coverage of Tragic Events

Have you ever noticed how whenever there's a tragic event like the recent bridge collapse in Minnesota that the various news channels manage to conjure up a theme song for each particular incident. Watching the news today it became apparent to me that as soon as one of these tragic events occur the news channels must have some kind of hot-line to some musical guru who must sit around 24-7 waiting for the 'bat-call!' in order to prepare music for these dramatic events. I imagine some long haired 'Jean Michel Jarre' type musical wiz sitting at his chair with banks of synthesizers, twiddly knobs and sound effect boards surrounding him waiting for these calls to come in.

Here's the scenario. Suddenly the phone rings, 'Rrrriinnnng' (That's the phone ringing!). 'Quick Jean-Michel, we need some sad music for the bridge collapse today. Can you have it ready by 6am?' 'Jean-Michel' gets on it right away. Perhaps he checks out the news reports coming from the scene to ascertain exactly what sort of mood music would be suitable. In this case simplicity is key. Keep it low key and dramatic he thinks. Perhaps a simple piano melody will be enough. About an hour later and after much piano tinklage he has his masterwork ready. He quickly messengers the tape or whatever format the music is in to the editor's room who then quickly and expertly cuts/edits the music in with the appropriate news footage. 'That's beautiful' nods the editor as he nods approvingly, humming along to the maudlin tune. I wonder how close that is to reality. All I know is each time I see this news-story from this particular news-channel the same snippet of music accompanies it.

So, my question is, do we really need mood music to accompany tragedies like this? When the initial invasion of Iraq began, did we really need a theme tune? Well apparently we did, a predictably military sounding bom ba ba bom drum roll affair to accompany the pictures of death and mayhem. It does us a disservice by allowing us to disassociate ourselves from the reality of what's actually happening on the screen and so we end up watching the news program in a sort of detached almost uncaring fashion because hey! real-life doesn't come with musical accompaniment. To me it sends the wrong message. It unwittingly associates real-life with entertainment. It turns a news-story into just something else to watch on T.V. 'Hey, do you want to watch Seinfeld or the Bridge Collapse?'

Worse still are some of the regular 'Entertainment?' TV programs that come on at 7 or 8 p.m. in the evening that are supposedly 'Entertainment'. Although exactly what is entertaining about the Iraq War or some of the other events/tragedies that these News Programs air is beyond me. Programs like 'Entertainment Tonight' and 'Extra' who almost laughably accompany tragic or happy events with either a slowed down or sped up version of their own theme tune. When 'Princess Diana' died I remember 'Entertainment Tonight' just slowing down their theme music, so instead of 'da, da, da, da, da daaaaa' we got 'da............. da.............. da............... da................ da............. daaaaaaaaaaaaaaa'. I guess not everybody has access to the musical geniuses that daytime news programmes have. Where's 'Jean-Michel' when you need him.