American TV

There are several things about American TV that are weird and confusing - the breaks every five minutes for ads, the way they pretend the programme's coming back on when they are just telling you who supplied the closed captioning and 'other considerations', the insistence that we need to know that the people in the commercials are actors and that the scenarios depicted are dramatisations despite the fact that nothing vaguely 'dramatic' is happening and so on. But the thing I really don't understand is why they make what is inaccurately described 'background music' so freaking loud. We frequently have to turn the TV up too loud just to be able to make out the dialogue over the symphonic strains of whatever interchangeable dramatic music they have chosen to illustrate a point, and I am at a complete loss as to why. Perhaps it's because they have realised that a lot of the dialogue on Law and Order and other similar shows is pretty lame and they want to distract us from it by confusing us with overwhelming music.