Many viewers have complained lately that the volume of certain ads is much louder than the volume of the program.
They’re right.
In some case the volume has been significantly higher than it should have been.
There are many reasons – the error may lie with advertising producers who compress the sound too much or do not have the resources to record the sound the way the regulations stipulate. The error may also lie with TV4, especially on the local level, where the volume was not sufficiently checked before the ad aired. The error may also lie with Teracom, which is responsible for the masters and the broadcast, in connection with the conversion from analog to digital.
Under the guidance of technical director Peter Dahl, TV4 has now taken a series of steps to deal with this. Hopefully everything will be improved soon.
Idol has been a success with viewers this fall, with well over one million viewers for each program.
When Idol aired last year the viewers were fuming: the e-mail box was overflowing, the phone was ringing off the hook, almost everyone complaining about the program and especially about the jury. This year there has been little reaction and few people are critical. Sure, some people question TV4′s decision to air a show in which young people get bullied, but there are also people who really want to watch repeats (these can be seen on Web TV and starting September 18 the shows will be rebroadcast on TV400) or find out what music will be played and sung.
Now on Monday Gotland is switching over to digital TV.
During the spring, summer and fall, most of the local TV stations within TV4 started broadcasting over the digital terrestrial network. Many now wonder when local TV will also be sent digitally via satellite.
I have spoken with Magnus Janson, who is responsible for TV4′s distribution technology, and he says, “it is both technologically complicated and very expensive to broadcast local TV digitally via satellite.”
Nonetheless, in the future TV4 plans to broadcast local TV digitally via satellite. However, it is not at all clear when this might take place.
And so Stadskampen ["Battle of the Towns" a Swedish TV show] is over for now. For seven weekends this summer, often from Thursday evening until Sunday morning, I have been out and about for the program meeting the viewers. It has been tremendously exciting, although interest in talking to TO has varied quite a bit from day to day and from town to town.
The most common questions had to do with the advertising and the transition to digital TV, but almost every kind of question that I’ve encountered in the past has also come up in the context of Stadskampen. Across the board people have been extremely friendly and interested. And many people have also come up to me in the streets and marketplaces, in shops and restaurants.
My thanks to all the viewers I met; it’s been a real pleasure.
