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A radio station with neither music nor speech, which broadcasts programmes consisting only of non-verbal noises made by people. Half an hour of laughter instead of comedy, an hour of screaming instead of horror and so on. The listener goes through various phases while listening, and is for example
first amused by the laughter, then irritated, then mocked and finally terrified. You turn the radio on in the middle of the night when one can't sleep to be greeted by seemingly endless shrieks of terror, or trying to soothe a baby to find that instead of music, one has tuned into the screaming baby marathon.
Other programmes include constant coughing, farting, sneezing, burping and so on, and dramas involving stories told through non-verbal sounds only, such as creaking doors, birdsong, other sound effects and human noises.
Birdsong proves popular on radio
http://www.telegrap...pular-on-radio.html [Wrongfellow, Jul 24 2011]
[link]
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The BBC is said to have broadcasted one show which had sound effects alone and no dialogue at all. |
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In the early days of stereo broadcasts, if I recall what I had read about it rightly. |
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[Neelandan], yes, they did it quite recently too but it
didn't appeal to me at the time. |
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Oh no, not a capella or however it's written. |
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[+] Screaming baby marathon (isn't that a band?)
would be useful for heavy sleepers with clock-
radio alarm-clocks. |
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Betcha a station which broadcast nothing but
laughter would do better than placebo as a
treatment for depression. Then, insurance
companies would require it be tried before
agreeing to pay for conventional (pharmaceutical)
antidepressants. As a result, millions of
depressed patients would be subjected to the
canned laughter. Mwahahaha. |
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This was baked in the UK about fifteen years or so ago. It began as a test transmission for a new FM station, but it soon acquired a following of its own. |
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Giggling babies would be a hit. |
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I once heard a restored (wax!) phonograph recording of a
man having a conversation on the telephone. It was about
7 minutes long, and you could only hear his end. It was
labeled and produced for sale; apparently, in the early
years of audio recording, people would listen to just about
anything just for the novel of hearing it come out of the
speaker. |
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More recently, birdsong was used on a DAB channel
before the real channel content appeared. I
understand there was also an aquarium TV channel
which was originally planned to be an SF channel. |
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[Mouseposture], i don't think that would happen. I
think laughter would move through infectious and
irritating to sinister and insane. |
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[ninteenthly] Sinister and malevolent, yes. |
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I was making a rather obscure point about the
distortion of clinical trial design by profit motives.
Formerly, most of the guilt attached to the
pharmaceutical companies, but lately the
insurance companies have been getting in on the
act. |
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Theoretically, good things come from competition
between greedy, amoral economic actors.
But it's hard for the toad beneath the harrow to
remember that. |
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It does make me wonder about the use of audio
tracks to change people's moods in a less contentious
way than subliminal suggestion. |
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[19] that is well crisped in the use and anal ysis of advertisement soundtracks. |
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Not with informed consent. |
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Consent is granted by choosing not to press the off button. |
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//Not with informed consent.// So far, audiences
at concerts and recitals aren't required to sign
informed consent documents, although, if music
isn't an audio track to change people's moods then
what is? |
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That gives me an idea for an SF short story set in a
libertarian dystopia (in the manner of "Jigsaw
Man"). In this society, the one, overriding value is
the individual's personal liberty; you can die in
the gutter, build a plutonium bomb in your garage
-- and no one will interfere.
The only crime is to interfere with someone
else's liberty -- or break a contract. Society is
organized solely by contracts -- almost no law,
except the enforcement of those. But in one
respect, the law is much stricter than we're
accustomed to: anything which interferes with
someone's perfect free will, in deciding what
contracts to enter into, is dealt with very,
very strictly. Wearing a short skirt to a
negotiation would be severely punished (although
prostitution would not). The protagonist is tried,
and found guilty of public busking without
obtaining informed consent from passers by,
whose mood might be altered by the music. |
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Yes, i like that. I have thought about writing a story
about contracts before. I think that could be done.
My thing is about promises being the only law, the
breaking of which is punishable by death. |
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Tonight, our Creepy Heavy Breathing special continues. |
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