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Comment by ourmandave | Hacker News Reader

... because most of our consumers were listening to Morning Edition and All Things Considered in the automobile to and from work.

Yet they still occasionally have a story with a siren in the background, so I start checking my mirrors and pulling over.

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Pardon me, but...

Holy shit, NPR's fascination with sound effects. Yes, I want to listen to 15 fucking seconds of someone chewing loudly between paragraphs. Sirens, crowd noises, people talking about something undoubtedly unrelated in Urdu.

Dear god, NPR's signature sounds are why I don't listen to it.

The shows with the constant sound effects also usually have what seems like a relatively new format: they try to make it sound like the hosts (it's always two hosts) are a couple of friends, interested laymen, having a talk at their house about the topic. So they stop to interject ("right?!" "No!"), they talk over each other but only occasionally so as not to annoy the listener, they basically feel like your two friends who've read the same Wikipedia page and are discussing it at a party.

And it's during this "conversation" that they play the sound clips:

HOST 1: "So there's this interesting thing they've just discovered, Host 2"

HOST 2: "What's that?"

HOST 1: "Scientists have discovered that when you eat..."

chomping and chewing noises

HOST 1: "... you're actually oppressing black people."

prison cell door slams

HOST 2: "What, seriously?"

That one doesn't bother me as much as this one:

HOST: "...and that's when we found Joseph SomethingOrOther" VOICE: "Hi, I'm Joseph SomethingOrOther" HOST: "Joseph SomethingOrOther is an expert on blahblah" VOICE: "Blahblah is foobar"

You just told me this person's name 3 times when 1 would've sufficed.

On the other hand, this makes sure you associate the voice with the name, when otherwise it's easy to miss.

This, times a million!

Oh, and the weird music. I'm not sure I need 15 seconds of annoying jazz improvisation at full volume between segments either. But that is indeed part of the "signature sound" :)

There's a great scene in a Parks and Recreation where Leslie (Amy Poehler) is on the local public radio station and they are about to go to commercial break. Before they do, however, they play part of a song from Nefertiti's Fjord (a "Lesbian Afro-Norwegian Funk Duo"). Leslie comments on how bad it is to which the host agrees but defends the choice with "but, they are lesbians, so..."

There's several scenes throughout the show that poke fun of various aspects of NPR that are usually quite funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU4t7COg6W4

I lost it the first time I saw "jazz + jazz = jazz"

This is already illegal in the UK, but sadly I think it will take a high profile court case where someone sues the radio station or an advertisement company for causing an accident to enact this kind of change in the US.

Just don't include emergency broadcast system[1] tones in your message[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Alert_System

[2] https://www.fcc.gov/document/enforcement-advisory-misuse-eas...

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/01/tbs-faci...

One fitting picture.

And the first person to be charged is the driver. If you cause an "accident" because you were listening to radio, you are driving reckless.

Human factors are a thing. Ask anyone who works in the aviation industry. (Or, for that matter, Jeep.)

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