Joni is as Iconic as a “Smell Mall”

 

And just as “Award-Winning”, too!

Tell me, does this:

equal this: ???

Allow me to elaborate:

Every day I hear someone’s name prefixed by “iconic and award-winning”. It’s just gotten stupid.

When a radio host is introducing a guest to me they shouldn’t start off by making me angry. But they do, every day.

Unfortunately, I’m hearing it on my dear old CBC Radio.
I hear it daily on “Q”, although I generally like Jian Gomeshi. I hear it on “The Next Chapter”, although I generally like Shelagh Rogers’ show, too.
Heaven forbid, I’ve heard it on Current Affairs and News shows. They should know better.
(Let me say that I’ve never heard the deplorable word on “Writers and Company” with Eleanor Wachtel. )

Is it to impress the audience? Is it to puff up the guests on these shows? How great and special do they feel when everyone, and I mean everyone, gets the “I and A-W” treatment?

“Iconic” is a word that has gone recently from being inaccurate to being meaningless.

Do people even remember what the word “icon” means? Can you even call an icon “iconic”?

“Award-Winning” is the PhD of the media world. If “iconic” is a kind of description, then “A-W” is the credentials.

Billboard Magazine even has an Icon Award – in case there weren’t enough categories already.

But it gets mundane very quickly.

Gomeshi and others use the same stock phrases over and over again, day in day out.  “award-winning” “iconic” etc.
Why would he repeat himself so much? Is it part of his signature style or is it unconscious. Is it laziness?

It’s not just Jian.  Repetition is the sin that every media genre is committing.

Repetition is not reinforcement.

Repetition is marketing torture or laziness or unimaginative. Or something in the DSM-5.

Reinforcement (a strong skill in radio) is used properly to remind an audience (especially in the world of “live”, no-rewind, no skip-back radio) of something that is of key importance. Even then, reinforcement can be achieved without using the same word or phrase. How do you it? The answer is: care, attention, imagination and diligence.

It’s the difference between the journeyman skills of a writer/speaker  and an art.

If the idea is to sound “hip”, then they’ve failed. “Hip” becomes pedestrian when these expressions become automatic conventions. A droning effect.

When everything is “award winning” and “iconic”, nothing is.

Can’t things be made to sound interesting without using tropes?

No Surprises?

I had a classmate in grade 8 who was hopeless with English composition. He didn’t care, except that he wanted to pass.  To encourage him, our teacher assigned him a very short essay in which he’d have to use  a word he’d never used before. For some reason, Edward found and used the word “desolate”.
Come the day when he had to read his composition to the class, Edward used “desolate”about seven times in three pages of writing. His house was “desolate”, he felt “desolate”, the walk to school was “desolate”. I don’t know, maybe his hometown was called Desolate, too.

It was bizarre. Then it was annoying. Then it was rather pathetic.
That’s what I think of when I hear “iconic” and “award-winning” today.

My Challenge: to Broadcasters and Marketers and Copy Writers Everywhere

Do a whole radio show, or article, without mentioning “awards” or saying “award winning” once and without using the word “iconic”.

If that’s too hard, could we have a rating system? An announcement at the beginning of talk shows such as: The following program uses the word “iconic” x amount of times.
We could call it the “iRating” (!)

In George Orwell’s “1984”, the destruction of words is predicted:

“In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words — in reality, only one word. Don’t you see the beauty of that, Winston?”

I vote for “iconic”. If it’s award-winning.

Today’s Listening: (not Elvis):

1. Dreamsville  by Henry Mancini fr: Peter Gunn soundtrack
2. Something’s Wrong by The Walls fr: Hi-Lo
3. Mustt Mustt (Lost in his Work) by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan & Michael Brooks fr: “Mustt Mustt”