Huh. This is really interesting; someone took a listen to the ABC live broadcast of Michael Moore’s Oscar speech and the CNN report on Michael Moore’s Oscar speech and you know what? CNN really has the boos miked way higher. There’s one guy yelling “Booo” really loudly in the CNN version who doesn’t show up at all in the ABC version.
Listen for yourself. I didn’t think I’d hear a difference, but I did. I’m not gonna claim it’s foul play — it could just be a different set of mikes used by CNN — but it is really distinct.
This also tends to explain why a fair number of bloggers perceived nothing but boos, which honestly confused me at the time. I watched the Oscars live, and I was pretty sure I heard mixed boos and cheers. Anyone just watching the CNN footage would certainly have gotten the impression that the boos outweighed the cheers by a country mile.
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Listening to it through my speakers, I got the distinct impression that the one guy going “Boo! Boo!” was standing directly in front of a microphone. I went ahead and put the headphones on, and I think it’s the static that gave me that impression. He’s definitely near a microphone, but he’s not standing too close, like I initially thought. I can definitely hear him in the ABC broadcast, though. One good spot to hear him is right after “Shame on you, Mr. Bush!” (1m43s into the 6 MB .mov of the ABC footage) It’s very clearly the same guy, but in the CNN footage he sounds like he comes across at the same volume as Moore, while in the ABC footage he’s definitely quieter than Moore. There’s no question that he’s louder on the CNN footage, because in the CNN footage he’s booing right before/during the words “orange alerts” (0m 40s, CNN) but I cannot hear him at all in the same spot on the ABC footage (1m 39s, ABC).
Just one other thing I note – there’s a guy saying something at “whether” in “for fictitious reasons. Whether it’s the fictition of duct tape…” He seems to be at about the same volume level on both sets of footage.
I don’t have the ear or the expertise to say anything really useful about this, but it sounds to me as though CNN is using some of the same microphones as ABC.
Oh, and geez – the CNN commentator (anchor?) sure sounds like he’s reporting on breaking news. He has no idea what is coming out of his mouth. I would expect a bit more from a CNN talking head who presumably has a few minutes to decide what he thinks about Michael Moore getting “roundly booed.”