The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is reporting the Weather Channel has opted to stop playing smooth jazz-type music during local forecast segments.
The music, which was apparently popular enough to warrant a CD release of a sampling of the tunes, will replaced with soft rock.
“I think we’ve been doing an injustice to our viewers playing, for the lack of a better word, elevator music on the segments for all these years,” Geoffrey Darby, the cable network’s new executive vice president of programming, told the AJC.
The Idolator blog, meanwhile, has list, complete with sample tracks, of the June 2009 lineup.
Darby also mentioned the new tunes won’t be thematically intrusive. So don’t expect the Doors’ “Riders on the Storm” with the next tornado alert, says the AJC.
On the day of Michael Jackson’s big memorial service, The Weather Channel was actually playing Jackson music. Surprised the heck out of me.
Well, I’m not all that cool with The Weather Channel replacing their traditional sound with a new one. That “elevator music” was smooth jazz, and what is wrong with that? I never gave thought to the music once, and it never gave me a reason to change the channel: OMG, I’m soooo bored watching the local weather segment, I’m gonna have to switch the channel. Ridiculous!
Does EVERYTHING on TV these days have to be amp’ed up, overblown and with a rock soundtrack? There is no room at all for instrumental music? Really?
TV is a pathetic exercise in noise and cacophony anymore. It’s not just this, I’m feeling a cumulative effect of all of the in-your-faceness of TV these days.
OK, I’m going back into the elevator now.