You're still angry about the end of last night's HHGG? Me to.

o.

>You're still angry about the end of last night's HHGG? Me to.

He's not the only one. Why talk over that superb bit of music? It's not as if it's the EastEnders theme, which is on 60 times a week. Grr. I was looking forward to that.

I don't believe that they do have any control over it, unfortunately.

This is something that has been brought in slowly over a long period of time, but has got progressively more furstrating, irritating and ultimately needless. The worst example of this is definitely when the end credits are zoomed out into a minute area of the screen, allowing an idiot Theakstonist presenter to babble away inanely in the remainder of the screen, or else clips of forthcoming entertainment from Carol Vordermann or whoever to be plugged at the expense of credits and music.

Even when I was young, I used to get annoyed when letters appeared in the Radio Times questioning the need for credits and asking "do we really need to know who the studio manager's cat [See? A joke. Gosh, these people are witty] is?". The answer is that yes, some of us do care. I've always been interested in the technicalities of making television programmes.

The worst thing is, you can smell the wanky corporate defence - 'We live in a multi-channel environment, and broadcasting is changing, as such we need to aid viewers who...blahdiblah'

This drives me potty.

I think it's most pernicious on children's Tv shows, where, in order to give the impression that all the shows are being broadcast from brightly coloured kids' Tv land, the credits are snipped off totally. When I was little, I learned that Ivor Wood was different than Cosgrove Hall was different than Hanna Barbera was different than Smallfilms. I did notice it. I did. And it built an appreciation of how TV was made that now enriches my viewing. I got excited by a Smallfilms product in a certain way, by a Filmation cartoon in a different way.

The next generation really won't know any different. I fear they won't be able to argue cogently about TV, because they grew up being told to just sit back and accept television as an unending stream of entertainment, rather than a series of separate creative artefacts, some of which can be better or worse than others, some of which were made by X, some by Y.

>The worst thing is, you can smell the wanky corporate defence - 'We live in a multi-channel environment, and broadcasting is changing, as such we need to aid viewers who...blahdiblah'

I've raised this point with people in ver industry as I, personally, hate the continuity talking over credits (and, even more so, the tendency to squeeze the credits whilst pre-trailing the next programme). The reason I got for it being done is "that it works", i.e. there is demonstrably better contiguity of audiences when they do this than if they don't.

My answer? Make sure that something dreadfully important is happening whilst the end credits are running. Or have a really short, or really popular, theme tune. They wouldn't dare do it over 'Friends' for example.

(Of course, some companies have started running "spoiler" trails during their end credits for next week's episode. They'll probably get told to stop doing that soon.)

Cheerio

Also explains why increasing numbers of comedy shows (including sitcoms) roll credits at the bottom of the screen while the final item is running. The Americans have been doing such a thing for about ten years: With their sitcoms they usually run an extra over the end credits (innovated by Roseanne in about 1991, but since adopted by just about all of them), while for dramas, I've noticed they've increased credit info at the top of an episode - not just full guest casts, but credits like music, director of photography, film editor, and all producers too, in so doing reducing credit time at the end of the programme (usually only about 30 seconds on most shows now).

Completely agree that there is no need either to talk over theme tunes - and even less need to have the screen reduced during the credits. Always remember screaming fuckwit every time the end titles of Frasier were reduced into a tiny box so that Eurotrash could be flashed up - meanwhile the visual impact of the wordless final scene of Frasier would be virtually invisible to the naked eye. Oh, and they'd always talk over Tossed Salad And Scrambled Eggs.

>I think it's most pernicious on children's Tv shows

My own children hate it when the dull-witted teenage anchors burst in immediately a show finishes. They genuinely can't see the point.

And then these greasy stage-school dimbos do five minutes of lame gags or competitions, delaying the shows that the viewing kids actually want to see.

I tell my lads of a golden age when programmes just came on one after the other, with perhaps a sobre-voiced man briefly announcing them. ("And now, Lizzie Dripping.")

They don't listen to me, obviously.

Indeed, you couldn't beat the avuncular, friendly announcer on afternoon shift saying "First on BBC1, Brian Trueman with some more hopeful contestants in Screen Test" in the same way that he'd have announced an entertainment programme for adults. The saddest thing is that the announcers scream like fuck when telling you about the adult shows now.

>The saddest thing is that the announcers scream like fuck when telling you about the
>adult shows now.

Exactly the point - the style of continuity announcements (and hosting) on kid's TV (which was bad enough then) has now been exported to prime-time and post-watershed TV.

The only example of a producer manageing to actively prevent continuity annoncements over the end title music is in the US, and it was the last episode of 'Babylon 5' - JMS (despite apparently coming to believe the fans when they talked of his god-like genius) actually cared, you see.

Having said that, they did used to talk over the end of shows in the 70s, so it's not a new idea. I have taped proof!

But bad show to BBC2 (well, bloody typical really). Was HHG the remixed stereo version, incidentally?

But when they used to talk over shows years ago, they used to say things like "Viewers may be interested to know that the theme tune is now available on a BBC single" or "[Name of actor] is currently appearing in Run For Your Wife at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane". Informative things, rather than distractions from you switching to ITV.