View From the Phlipside - Arkansas football flap

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

I’m climbing out on a limb this week because I’m delving into a realm about which I don’t know much.  Sure it’s still a story about the media but there’s an influencing factor here that is a major part of the story about which I just don’t have much expertise.  That’s college football.  I generally watch a single college game a year, the Army Navy game (Go Navy, beat Army!).  So maybe I just don’t get something here.

You’ve probably heard the story about Arkansas sports broadcaster Renee Gork who was fired by her all sport station for wearing a University of Florida hat to a press conference with the University of Arkansas football coach Bobby Petrino.  The station is heavily invested in their relationship with the Arkansas Razorbacks and said that the incident compromised Gork’s ability to continue reporting on the program.

Seriously?  A hat?  Seem’s Renee owns the hat for a good reason, she’s an alumna of Florida.  She wore it because it was raining that day and it was the first hat at hand.  The university let her into the press room with it on and Petrino even called on her the hat in plain view.  If it’s that big a deal why didn’t somebody tell her to either take it off or get out?  I

Now to be the good reporter myself I must note that Miss Gork did not have a perfect record as an employee.  She apparently tweeted and posted to Facebook comments complaining about how early she had to get up to cover practice while noting it wouldn’t have been a problem if it had been a Florida practice.  That’s just dumb.  Gork offered to apologize to the coach and the school.  Apparently this was an unforgivable sin however.  

That’s the part I don’t get is why ANY of this would rise to the level of firing her.  Yes her online postings were stupid and not in the best interests of her relationship with her employer.  Reprimand her, suspend her, demote her. I’m just astounded that so many college fans see this as such an important issue.  College football, at least in Arkansas, is apparently so delicate that wearing the wrong hat is a capital offense.  Life or death.

To me that’s just crazy.  It’s a game.  You play for 4 years and you walk away.  You want serious consequences?  Talk with the Army and Navy players.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.
"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

View From the Phlipside - Coffee vs Technology push back

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

The digital future stretches away in front of us.  A superhighway of binary code pushing the past to the side.  And everyone can hardly wait to get there.

OK, that last statement is just wrong.  There’s a sizable portion of the world that either actively resists the technology tsunami or just doesn’t care.  Recent reports say that the anti-technology sentiment is now showing up in some unexpected places.  Like coffee shops.

Coffee shops have attained a cultural cool quotient that makes them a real player in society and business.  Even yours truly, a notorious non-drinker of coffee, is a regular in several of our local cafes.  I go for the good food and company.  Coffee shops have long been technorati friendly for those deeply immersed in their digital devices.  That tide may be turning.  On both the East and West coasts more coffee shops are becoming “No Computer” zones.  Some places have expanded the definition to include e-readers like the Kindle.  The problem is really not surprising.  Folks come in early the day and stay for hours upon hours nursing a single drink while taking up chair space and bandwidth.  Some places have simply dropped the Wi-Fi access.  

In the end what we’re really looking at is another set of challenges from the digital revolution.  The e-reader issue is going to be a non-starter.  I’m just as likely to sit for hours reading a novel as my e-reader (if I had one).  The coffee shops are going to have to face the reality that a great many of their clientele consider Wi-Fi a vital attribute for their business.  At the same time this comes back to the digital generations tendency to want things for free.  You gonna take up space at a local business you need to pay the freight.  We may need to come up with some time versus expenditure equation.  A new purchase of at least so much every couple hours.  Can’t afford it?  Then go find a seat at the public library.

When business works best it’s a partnership between the business and its customers.  I like our local coffee places because they treat me well even though I don’t drink their primary product.  In return I try avoid hogging space they need to make enough money to stay in business.

Let’s just make this an unexpected bump on the information superhighway.  With a little common sense on both sides no one needs to spill their coffee.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010



Check out my favorite local coffee spots

Labyrinth Press, 12 East 4th St Jamestown
Rider's Cup, 305 East Fairmount Ave Lakewood

View From the Phlipside - Dr. Laura

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

It looks like the end of an era in talk radio.  Dr. Laura Schlessinger has survived flaps over her qualifications (she’s a doctor of physiology not psychology or counselling), nude photos and a fair sized contingent of critics.  In the end it was her repeated use of the “N word” in a discussion of race relations on her show, 11 times in about 5 minutes, that brought her highly successful program to an end.

Let me make a couple things clear.  First, I am not and never have been a fan of Dr. Laura’s.  Just a personal taste thing.  I didn’t like her style.  Plenty of other folks did and do.  Second, I don’t think Laura Schlessinger is any more racist that the average person in America.  Race is the single most difficult and complicated issue in America.  If you think there’s a simple answer to it, you’re nuts.  It’s complex and nuanced and highly volatile.  Enter that ground at your own risk.

No what grabbed my attention in all of this was Dr. Laura’s comments when she announced her departure from the show.  She said she wanted to get her First Amendment rights back again.  This is the stuff that makes me crazy.  Her First Amendment rights were never infringed.  Never, as in not ever.

Yes, groups have worked for years to pressure her sponsors and affiliates to drop her because they don’t like what she says or how she says it.  That has nothing to do with her First Amendment rights.  In fact the pressure groups have Constitutionally protected rights to do just that.  The First Amendment protects the individual from the government infringing on our rights of expression.  It does nothing, nor should it, to offer any protection from the consequences in an open society and free market to what we say.  The First Amendment has never been absolute under any circumstances.  Classically the example given is that you have no right to shout “Fire” in a crowded building if there is in fact no fire.

Dr. Laura exercised her First Amendment right to discuss a volatile and extremely important issue in American society.  She did so very badly and is now paying for that mistake.  While it may be unjust to call her a racist it’s equally wrong to claim her Constitutional rights are being taken from her.  She wasn’t being racist, she was being stupid.  And the Constitution doesn’t protect you from that.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.

"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

View From the Phlipside - The Future of the News

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, Radio, the Movies and more. I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View From the Phlipside.

So what ARE we going to do about the news? I’ve commented here many times over the last couple years about the changes in the news industry. Primarily the ongoing demise of the daily newspaper with things like network nightly news not far behind it. The days when local radio was a real source for local news has largely passed (with all due respect for my friends who still toil away in local radio news. I love you guys and gals but radio as an industry turned its back on local news more than a decade ago).

So what’s going to happen next? Cable news networks will fill some of the gap. So much of their time these days seems to be dedicated to bloviating and shouting head death matches that I wonder if they are really interested in you know, reporting the news. Some newspapers and magazines are trying to find their way forward in digital form and I have some hope for that.

What interests me is the concept that Google is calling “citizen journalism”. Marshaling the force of smart phones to report live from the spot but at a number level no network EVER could have imagined. Getting people involved with pushing stories that they have a link to is a very interesting way to try and push editorial biases to the side.

There is of course a dark side to this as well and we’re seeing the first of it over the social news website Digg. At Digg people get to push stories they believe in or that they may feel the mainstream media isn’t covering enough. A group dubbed the Digg Patriots are apparently trying to rig the game. It appears about 100 folks with conservative politics have decided to use the system to bury as many stories that deem to be “liberal” as possible. By consistently downgrading the stories they can effectively make them disappear for the average viewer. With over 7 millions unique visitors in June these falsely named “patriots” can have a serious impact on the news that the rest of us see.

I don’t know what the next paradigm for the news will look like. I can only hope that it’s as balanced and fair as possible. That’s the real patriotism.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.


"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

View From the Phlipside - Lost Epilogue and Auction

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media. TV, Radio, the Movies and more. I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion. Call this the View From the Phlipside.

You either got the TV show “Lost” or you didn’t. You were either willing to invest the time and energy to try and keep up with the characters, the time lines, the flashbacks, the flash forwards, the alternate stories lines and the enormous number of unexplained stuff, or you weren’t. I’ve acknowledged that I was a “Lostie”. One of the band of dedicated fans who set all other things aside so that we could watch each weeks episode over the years that the hit TV show ran.

And then it came to an end. The ending left us with nothing more than memories and the chance to argue about what the ending meant and did it really meet our expectations. Or so we thought.

For the fans out there you can smile in anticipation. For the Lost haters out there you can groan in pain that your torment isn’t really over. On August 24 the Lost DVDs will arrive on the market. On them you will find a 12 minute epilogue titled “The New Man in Charge”. A week ago a sneak peak version of the epilogue hit the internet until the Disney attorneys threatened everyone in sight and got it pulled. Since I was away from my computer at the time I didn’t see it but I have seen the official trailer. When last we saw the Island Ben and Hurley were left in charge together. The trailer shows that Ben is out and about doing some clean up work apparently shutting down the last of the Dharma project around the world. The trailer is only about a quarter of the full 12 minutes so there’s no telling what else may be included. It’s probably a fair bet that nothing will be made very clear however.

But that’s not the only good news/bad news for Lost lovers and haters. At the end of THIS week there will be an auction of all kinds of Lost props and materials. You could snag anything from some Dharma initiative films to Hurley’s lottery ticket to the VW minibus! Over a thousand lots are set to go under the hammer. The auction itself takes place in California but online bidding is also available. Google Lost Auction bidding for the link.

I mean who wouldn’t want a row of Oceanic Airlines seats for their office?

Call that the View From the Phlipside.



"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010

View From the Phlipside - Girl Scouts

My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, Radio, the Movies and more.  I love them and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View From the Phlipside.

OK a little imagination exercise today.  Imagine that you a well known, highly respected, high profile organization that has been around for almost 100 years.  The problem is that your image is old, stale and focused on one thing that’s NOT really your core identity.  It’s a business that generates over 700 million dollars a year so getting this new image campaign right is very important.  Not like there’s any pressure or anything right?

I was interested when I saw that this is exactly what’s happening with the...Girl Scouts.  You see the problem is that the Girl Scouts have gotten to the point that the only thing most people think of when they hear the name is cookies.  And Girl Scout cookies are a good thing.  That’s what generates that 700 million dollars I mentioned before.  But did you know that 80% of female CEOs were Girl Scouts once upon a time?  It was news to me.  The reality is that while our appetite for their cookies is climbing the number of girls enrolled in the scouting program is down to just 10% of all girls.  Before those numbers got any worse the Girl Scouts made their move.

They’ve revamped their logo, staying with something very familiar but updating it a bit.  They’ve added a whole new Spanish language campaign because the female Hispanic population is one that is growing in our country but familiarity with the scouting program is low.  The emphasis will move away from the nice but not relevant image of the last several decades to one focused more closely on leadership training.  Less emphasis on the campfires and badges more on real life issues like body image and self esteem for girls.  The tag line for the campaign is “What did you do today?”  Internally they’ve made changes as well, trying to stream line the organization to help take advantage of economies of scale.  And that may only be the tip of the iceberg as they tinker with a program headed into its second century.

A 700 million dollar a year business with a proven track record of turning out competent, successful female leaders.  Tell you what, I’m not going to bet against these girls.  And sign me up for some Thin Mints.

Call that the View From the Phlipside.


"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY.  You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010