MSMI 2:2 Autumn 08 153

Television Sound:
Why the Silence?

MICHELE HILMES

1 Michel Chion recog-

nises this when he refers
to cinema as a place of The field of sound studies has shown enormous growth over the past
images, plus sounds, fifteen years. Excellent work has recently appeared on many aspects of
with sound being that
which seeks its place in
sound in media, with particularly rapid development in the fields of
distinction to television radio, film, popular music, and the historical development of sound
(Chion 1994: 68). In fact recording and listening cultures. Film sound, in particular, enjoys a
he titles one section
Televisions Optional depth of analysis that has been building up since the 1980s. Video game
Image and notes, The sound is beginning to receive the attention it deserves. Yet the one area
properly televisual is the
image as something still strangely silent comprises the dominant medium of our times since
extra (ibid.: 159), the 1940s: broadcast television. Why does television sound remain
though without noting
televisions heritage from neglected in academic study, despite a long history of professional and
radio. industrial development? I will argue here that this omission is due to two
2 Both John Ellis (1982) primary aspects of television: its roots in radio and subsequent basis in an
and Raymond Williams aesthetic of what I will call streaming seriality, and its fundamental differ-
(1975), along with many
subsequent scholars, ences from film as a subject of scholarship.
note this segmentation Televisions radio roots mandate an emphasis on sound over the
and flow characteristic
of broadcast television, visual, as many have noted (see Ellis 1982, and Altman 1986); create an
though both, I believe, historical legacy of enormous textual variation derived from a domi-
go too far in attempting
to essentialise them as
nantly aural originating context (as opposed to films dominantly visual
an intrinsic, rather than context);1 and engender a live streaming transmission aesthetic, funda-
historically and cultur- mentally imbricated in televisions characteristic seriality. Broadcast tele-
ally contingent, aspect
of television. Neither vision can be, at times, streamed completely live (viewed in the moment
notes the roots of tele- an event is transmitted), recorded and transmitted (shot on film or video
visions narrative and
aesthetic structures in but then subjected to live streaming), or (most often) a mixture of both,
the historical particu- and of course all forms can now be recorded post-stream on tape, disc,
larities of radio broad-
casting, and both dismiss or as a digital file and re-presented in a number of ways. Yet broadcast
the textual integrity of television, even when recorded, retains at all times markers of its basic
television forms that,
despite their varied
streaming structure, which in turn has a determining effect on the
diegetic levels (as I will mediums variety and complexity of textual strategies and techniques.2
argue below), still retain This leads to a complicated analytical situation, and ironically it could
an integrity that is well
known both to viewers be that scholars efforts to understand sound in the much more closed,
and to those who formalised, and visual situation of film have actually worked against an
produce televisions
episodic series. understanding of the special circumstances and opportunities of televisual
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Michele Hilmes Television Sound: Why the Silence?

sound overall. The term film typically denotes a dominant textual form
(the narrative feature film), as well as a consistent medium (the materi-
ality of film itself), and a central, though changing, technology of produc-
tion, with modes of distribution and exhibition that can vary widely. The
same might be said of the music video, when considered on its own and
divorced from its televisual context, as it often is. The term television,
on the other hand, denotes a unified (until recently) mode of distribution
and exhibition, but specifically not a unified textual form, material
medium, nor technology of production. Thus, conflating film and tele-
vision as separate but equivalent media forms may have helped to
produce the scholarly silence, a particularly unfortunate one since
sounds heightened importance in television makes its analysis all the
more necessary if we are to arrive at a better understanding of the
medium and its central expressive modes: subject to present-time inter-
ruptions; permeated with markers of the streamed transmission context;
never static but constantly flowing past and renewing itself in the present;
derived from fundamentally aural origins.
Attempts to examine TV sound to date have focused either on fictional
texts treated as filmic (despite difficulties which are usually simply
glossed over) or on the short, self-contained form of the music video,
framed by the conventions of popular music (see Donnelly 2005; and
Beebe and Middleton 2007). Other theorists, like Chion, pounce arbi-
trarily upon one limited type of televisual text in his case, sport and
leave the rest implicit (1994: 61). Television has no ur-text, no one
dominant form like the narrative feature film, and it is much more
strongly tied than film to the representation and transmission of real-life
events, live as they occur. These characteristics of broadcasting cannot
simply be chalked up to technology but must be understood as part of
televisions cultural role; during the days of early radio the transmission
of recorded sound was actively discouraged, for political and social
reasons, and the transmission of any and all live programming actively
rewarded by regulatory benefits. This did not begin to change in radio
until the late 1930s. Early TV, as well, had its reasons for retaining a live
serial streaming aesthetic competition between networks and defense
against possible dominance by Hollywood studios, in the US; expense
and resistance to cultural intrusion in many other countries though
filmed programmes always made up a certain amount of televisual fare,
becoming prevalent in the US by the early 1960s.
Thanks to such historical conditions, broadcast forms span a wide
variety of uses, genres, aesthetics, and modes of address, drawn from a
broad scope of events and performances either created or adapted for
the medium, all central to the multiple textuality of television and impos-
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Michele Hilmes Television Sound: Why the Silence?

sible to marginalise. This contrasts with our rather homogeneous under-

standing of film which certainly has been and still is (as a material
medium) used for recording sporting events, preserving news actualities,
shooting televised dramas, comedies, documentaries and quiz shows
indeed, most television until very recently was actually produced on film.
Now both are moving to digital, and the differences between the two can
be more clearly seen to rest in historically contingent and shifting
practices (both industrial and scholarly) rather than essential qualities.
The study of sound in video games, proceeding apace, also helps to bring
attention to TV sound since it too breaks open some of the arbitrary
conventions upon which our understandings of film sound are based.
So how can we dig ourselves out of this hole and bring some produc-
tive attention to TV sound attention which I believe will be useful for
understanding other forms of media as well as they develop in the
streaming digital age, including film? First, we must begin to define our
object of study more clearly, making distinctions between the various
types of television text rather than attempting to generalise and essen-
tialise as we have permitted ourselves to do with film. Second, we must
recognise the very different and complex role that sound plays in televi-
sion, as distinct from that in film. Especially important to consider is the
prominence and importance of metadiegetic and extradiegetic sound
(nondiegetic narration, particularly) in televisions varied levels of textu-
3 My use of the term ality episodic text, series text, and supertext3 that grew out of the
supertext owes some- broadcast environment as institutionalised in the days of radio.
thing to Nick Brownes
definition: those parts
of the television text-
as-viewed that fall
outside the diegesis of The Non-reductiveness of Television
the episodic text and
mark the larger context To address the first point: distinctions between the various types of tele-
within which television vision texts must take the specific historical evolution of television into
is produced, distributed,
and experienced (1984). account, along with a nuanced understanding of their conditions of
Here I am less concern- production and reception. Thus, just to begin a complicated process, we
ed with the concrete
aspects of the institu- must distinguish fictional/dramatic forms, such as the drama series,
tional and economic sitcom, mini-series, made-for-TV movie, etc., from the non-fictional
structure of television,
as Browne is, than with forms that make up so much of televisions output. Televisions fictional
the ways in which tele- forms, of course, owe much to the aesthetics of film, and film-based
vision texts use sound
to bridge the different
theories can take us a large part of the way through our analysis. But they
textual levels and mark also derive from the aesthetics and textual forms of radio, complicating
them within the diegesis. film-based analytical categories, as will be discussed below.
However, non-fictional forms make up a majority of the material
created for and distributed through television news and documentary,
sports, reality programmes, game shows and contests, broadcasts of live
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Michele Hilmes Television Sound: Why the Silence?

events of all descriptions, advertising, talk and discussion programmes

and while these share some of the same aesthetic characteristics of their
fictional counterparts (and of their more extensively analysed counter-
parts in cinema, such as the documentary film), they must also be under-
stood as differing fundamentally in their use of sound.
For example, one of the key distinctions in film sound theory is
between the diegetic and nondiegetic use of sound.4 Diegetic sound, posi- 4 Though these terms of
analysis were developed
tioned as emanating from a source within the narrative world of the film, specifically for fictional
fundamentally comprises dialogue and environmental sound/sound narrative films, they
effects, with diegetic music the relatively rare exception (for most film have obvious relevance
to documentary and
genres). Though some excellent work has explored the cinematic work non-fiction forms as well,
of dialogue and narration,5 it is rare; most film sound studies have since all narratives,
whether fictional or
focused on music not surprising, perhaps, considering that the study of nonfictional, are
music is itself an established discipline that gives its analysts a well constructed and
organised as a narrative.
developed vocabulary to use and certain cultural parameters within
5 In particular see Sarah
which to work. And it is non-diegetic music, the film score, that has
Kozloff s two ground-
received the most attention, as the most creative and distinctly sonic breaking works, Invisible
part of the filmic audio/visual text. Certainly television employs musical Storytellers (1988) and
Overhearing Film Dialogue
scoring practices similar to film (and many film composers developed (2000).
their skills in radio and also worked in television radios influence on
the early film score and vice versa is an almost completely unexamined
field). However, with the majority of television programming flouting
almost all the textual assumptions made in this body of work, we must
clearly branch out.
Let us consider, for instance, the problems that a sports broadcast, say
a major league football game, presents to the analyst of television sound.
What is the diegesis here? Can we talk in terms of the storyworld of the
football game? Clearly the diegetic/nondiegetic distinction does not work
well, but we would still want to mark some fundamental differences
between the sounds picked up from the event going on in the stadium
which would include the noises made by the players, the crowd, the
stadium music, the stadium announcer6 from the commentary 6 The last three of these
categories represent
provided by the sports reporters and analysts, both those present on or forms of televisions
near the field and those back in the studio nowhere near the live event ubiquitous internal
though also an intrinsic part of the televisual one. Such participants audience identified by
Altman (1986: 5760).
appear and disappear visually but remain consistently present aurally
and in fact interact with each other and with players in the diegetic
world, as Chion notes; in this they cross over between the classic
(nondiegetic) voice-over narrator and the (metadiegetic) in-text narra-
tives of participant narrators, yet they retain a strong diegetic function as
characters in the game (episode) text as well.
Such elements differ again from the supertextual interruptions of the
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Michele Hilmes Television Sound: Why the Silence?

game text such as commercials, network and NFL promos, news updates,
scrolls containing scores of other sporting events taking place during the
game, and such materials. They also differ from the frequent irruptions
of the NFL theme, the Fox Sports intros and bumpers, and the
recorded sequences from past games that form part of the sports serial
text as a whole, not to mention the animated figure jumping up and
down intermittently in the corner of the screen. It seems that in a non-
fictional text, especially one in which liveness is a crucial part of the
aesthetic, accepted categories must give way to first-order, second-order,
and perhaps even third-order diegetic elements, relating more to the
dimensions of the event as mutually understood by producers and
viewers than to anything intrinsic to the-text-as-viewed. Old unities do
not stand. Clearly, to borrow a term from Chion, this makes the audio-
visual contract developed between television producers and their
viewers very complex indeed.
Or, for another example with perhaps more weighty implications than
the one above, take the case of a news broadcast. What are the diegetic
layers that exist in a typical broadcast, consisting of either filmed or live
action taking place on location with a reporter providing commentary
from that location, interviewing participants in the event (and in the case
of those speaking a different language, with someone unseen providing
a translation of that sound bite, perhaps with the actual voice of the inter-
viewee played underneath), and the narrative that surrounds it delivered
by news anchors at a desk thousands of miles away? Not to mention the
nondiegetic music now so much a part of the news experience along with
any number of nondiegetic visual/verbal elements such as scrolling text,
pop-up network IDs, etc. Documentary filmmakers have long struggled
with nondiegetic sound as somehow less authentic, as detracting from the
real, since the days of Flaherty and Grierson; this distinction is main-
tained in news programmes where nondiegetic music may intrude over
network logos and anchors introductions, but is kept strictly out of the
news reports themselves: imagine 60 Minutes running an ominous
musical score beneath an interview with Fidel Castro, or Anderson
Cooper developing a distinctive leitmotif to introduce the appearance
and accompany the comments of each of his regular guests. So we do
maintain quite central and rigorously observed distinctions in non-
fictional television sound that relate in some way to the diegetic/non-
diegetic distinction, but so far we have developed a very poor vocabulary
for talking about it when we talk about it at all.
Even in the more film-like arena of fictional programmes, the condi-
tions and practices of television complicate standard categories of
analysis. For instance, the laugh track has been a standard part of the
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soundtrack for US comedy programmes, particularly for the sitcom, for

at least fifty years. What is the narrative status of this sound? Many
sitcoms are in fact shot before a live studio audience, a practice developed
during the days of radio comedy/variety programmes when performers
used to the vaudeville stage found themselves unable to perform well
without the immediate feedback of an amused crowd. Later, as recording
technologies developed, it became possible simply to dub in various kinds
of supplementary laughter in the post-production process, eliminating
unwelcome variables in audience response. We might think of the laugh
track as a form of metadiegetic sound sound that seems to come both
from inside and outside the narrative world of the text (expressing a
characters feelings, for instance) while possibly gesturing to the presence
of viewers and the constructedness of the text yet the laugh track
gestures to the presence of a laughing audience completely distinct from
the one presently viewing the programme, unknown either to textual
actors or to the viewer: a third universe (distinct from the on-screen
internal audience of talk shows or sports events). It is clearly not part of
the sitcom storyworld even though actors might adjust their timing to
take account of prolonged laughter, yet it is an intrinsic part of the text-
as-viewed. It therefore blurs the boundaries of the diegetic, nondiegetic,
and metadiegetic and if, while we laugh aloud in our living room at
such a moment, a computer-generated image of The Closers7 Deputy 7 Turner Network

Chief Brenda Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick) leaps up in the corner of our Television series, 2005
.
screen, shines a flashlight around, and disappears, we have just experi-
enced a completely extratextual visual element as well, a category sure to
give film scholars apoplexy. What a medium!

Televisions Fundamental Seriality 8 No one, as far as I

know, has explained the
As with video games, we require terms of analysis for television sound historical link between
broadcastings streaming
(and narrative as well, I would argue) that take into account broad- transmission and the
castings fundamental streaming seriality: present-time transmission structure of daily/
combined with episodic, often open-ended, structure. These two linked weekly/season seriality
that emerged early in
attributes8 mandate a far higher presence of a far wider range of the 1920s. It was resisted
extradiegetic narrative information, across all textual types and genres, by the BBC, who stead-
fastly preferred a special
than is typical in film, with sound as a central element. Broadcast televi- events schedule to what
sions streaming transmission engenders the frequent use of a type of they called fixed-point
scheduling until the
sound I would define as supratextual, relating less to the specific late 1930s. In the US,
programme text being viewed than to the supertext understood as the the concept of the
regular daily or weekly
television viewing experience as a whole the voice of the network programme was in
announcer touting upcoming shows, the ebullient narrator of commer- place as early as 1923
on some stations.
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cials, news bulletin interruptions, etc. These are all a part of televisions
live/streaming aesthetic inherited from radio. They make unusually
explicit and frequent use of direct address narration speaking to you
the viewer compared to cinema where such direct address is rare.
Besides these supratextual manifestations, also central to televisions
characteristic seriality is the use of metadiegetic sound to address the
viewer outside the storyworld of the specific episodic text foregrounded on
the screen at any given time, while remaining within the series text under-
stood as the entire narrative arc of the serial (usually broke up into
seasons). The most notable example of this on television is the title song
and/or sequence, along with the intros and bumpers also derived from
radio practice. Like film opening title and closing credit sequences
which have been little theorised such uses of music and sound are
9 Rick Altman gestures clearly nondiegetic, gesturing towards recognition of the supertext,9 yet
towards the notion of a in television they frequently provide key information about the
cinematic supertext in
his essay Film Sound programmes basic narrative situation, characters, and plot elements that
All of It, in which he are necessary for an intelligible reading of the episodic text.
includes not only the
sound emanating from This can become particularly important for long-running and narra-
the film itself but also the tively complex serialised dramas. Take, for instance, the opening of the
sounds of projection, of
the theatre audience, Fox show Alias (20016). Over a montage of various action scenes
and even of the promo- featuring lead actress Jennifer Garner, a voice (that we soon understand
tional materials screened
before the feature, as
as hers) breathlessly intones:
part of a films sonic
totality (1999). My name is Sidney Bristow. Seven years ago I was recruited by a secret
branch of the CIA called SD-6. I was sworn to secrecy, but I couldnt keep
it from my fianc. And when the head of SD-6 found out, he had him killed.
Thats when I learned the truth: SD-6 is not part of the CIA. Ive been
working for the very people I thought I was fighting against. So, I went to
the only place that could help me take them down. Now Im a double agent
for the CIA, where my handler is a man named Michael Vaughn. Only one
other person knows the truth about what I do, another double agent inside
SD-6. Someone I hardly know my father.

This enigmatic and tantalising recap contains key information without

which the viewer would have serious difficulty following the narrative. It
lays out the basic storyworld of the series, occurring every week at the
very beginning of each episode broadcast, sometimes followed by an
immediate immersion into the episodic text, sometimes by rapidly cut-
together scenes from past episodes that provide further reminders of the
ever-unrolling series text. Then, very likely, we cut to commercial,
preceded by a bumper with the ubiquitous announcers voice intoning,
Alias brought to you by and a bit later we are back, first to the
series textual level, with the shows title music invoking mood over the
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Michele Hilmes Television Sound: Why the Silence?

unrolling credits, then finally to the diegetic world of the episodic text.
This kind of rapid alternation between levels of textuality, much of it
dependent on the soundtrack for cohesion, is unique to television and
traces its roots to techniques developed in radio in the 1930s and 40s.10 10 I explored some
aspects of this multi-level
Some of these, but far from all of them, will be dropped (and replaced address in Chapter 4 of
with menu sequences, a new diegetic form dominated by sound) when Hollywood and Broad-
casting (1990), looking
the series is released on DVD. at The Lux Radio Theatre.
In many recent television dramas, a selected popular recording fills
the function of both theme song and a type of narrative/emotional
situation recap, such as the Rembrandts Ill Be There for You on
Friends, or The OCs use of the song California by the Phantom Planets.
Work is just emerging on the dramatically increasing use of popular song
tracks in television narratives, from Miami Vice to Nip/Tuck, drawing on
Jeff Smiths key work on the role of popular music in film. His study
provides a model for consideration of the various linkages between the
popular music industry and the increasing use of songs in film, and gives
television scholars a good jumping-off point.

Conclusion
Yet, if this essay has driven home any single point, it is that televisions
complex and varied texts require a mode of analysis that draws on cate-
gories and concepts based on film study, but is not limited by them.
Sound is extremely important in television, but not for the ideological,
technological, or essentialised reasons that many scholars have imputed
to it. Once we understand that television owes its most basic narrative
structures, programme formats, genres, modes of address, and aesthetic
practices not to cinema but to radio and once we begin to see television
not as a failed or lesser form of cinema but as a portfolio of inventive
narrative forms each with its own highly effective techniques, compre-
hensible to and highly valued by audiences around the world we can
begin to appreciate the unique and complex narratives that televisions
sonically-oriented streamed seriality has made possible. Though
currently on the brink of change, as digital distribution replaces the
nearly 100-year history of over-the-air broadcast transmission, and
streaming is captured on DVD, digital downloads, TiVo menus, and
video-on-demand services, I believe it unlikely that audiences will be
willing to give up the dense, twisting, compelling, multi-layered and
aurally ingenious serial texts that are broadcast televisions cultural
legacy to whatever comes next. Cherchez le son.
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Michele Hilmes Television Sound: Why the Silence?

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Beebe, Roger, and Middleton, Jason (eds.) (2007) Medium Cool: Music Videos from
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Browne, Nick (1984) The Political Economy of the Television (Super) Text,
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