| « Call for Artists: COLOR @ 345 Gallery | A Creative Refuge for Girls » |
Television Sun Jul 25 2010
Phantom Narrator on Channel 11
I raced home to watch "Poirot" on WTTW and was greeted by some really odd audio that got fixed towards the end of the program.
First of all, the sound when the characters were speaking was echo-y, then I noticed that whenever the characters stopped talking and there was just visual action, a female voice would describe every non-dialogue scene. It happened from the beginning of the show towards the last part, when Poirot had everyone sit around (as is typical in Agatha Christie mysteries) to sum up and solve the murders.
I kept wondering who the phantom narrator was, and why. Then I surmised that it's probably a version of "Poirot" for blind people, because every single aspect of the show had either dialogue or specific descriptions of what was going on.
Well I'm glad that someone at Channel 11 had the sense to correct the problem, though I was growing increasingly dependent on the extensive narration, especially when I had to leave the room to make something to eat :D
bill / July 26, 2010 10:35 AM
I spent 30+ minutes searching the internet and my tv remote for removing the "descriptive" narrative.
I thought we had accidentally pressed a button that turned on a 'closed captionning of sorts' for blind folks
I finally called my parents who confirmed that they heard it too...i.e. wasn't just our tv.
IMO this was a pretty big screwup as it made the show difficult to watch.
In the future it would be good to supply both 'vanilla' and 'descriptive' audio as this could be helpful even for us sighted folks