Program scripts from week of March 12, 2012
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.
Not So Fast
Thinking back to the first couple computers I owned, hand me downs from my father and father-in-law, I remember that it took a bit of time for them to get fired up and ready to go. I don’t remember thinking that it was such a terrible hardship. It took a minute or two for the system to boot up, run through it’s checks and then I was off an running. Or so I thought. None of those programs worked real fast. By today’s standards they were positively glacial in fact.In fact we are expecting things to move faster and faster. Some folks have noted that our attention span seems to be decreasing right along with the increase in speed. Others scoff at that we watch lots of long form programming all the time.
Well maybe it’s time to sit back and think again. Certainly the folks at Google have been re-considering the idea of how fast fast really is. Online experts have noted that web surfers are growing ever more impatient. If a web page takes too long to come up to running speed we’re just as likely to go elsewhere.
Here’s the fun part. Care to know just how fast we now expect our web pages to function? Let’s put it this way - the literal blink of an eye is about 400 milliseconds. Literally, a blink of an eye. The current yardstick for how fast that page should function based on Google’s latest studies of consumer use? 250 milliseconds. About a half of an eye blink.
Seriously? I’ll admit that I get frustrated when pages take forever to load. Forever in my computer lexicon is anything over 2 seconds. Literally. If the page loads in one thousand one, one thousand two or less I probably don’t think twice about it. Our instant gratification society is rapidly arriving at the point of ridiculousness. The reality of the situation is that most of us are in fact NOT doing anything particularly important online, even at work. If it takes an eye blink and a half that is more than sufficient to keep the world moving along quite nicely.
Demanding more than that is a level of narcissism and self- centeredness that really ought to give us pause. In fact a pause now and then would probably do us all a great deal of good.
Broadway Flops
I’ve talked before about the apparent inability of many old line media to come to grips with some of the new media. To my eye it simply appears that the old timers are so locked into the mind set of “what we’ve always done” that they can’t think outside the box. Plus there’s real resistance to letting a new generation come in and try some new ideas. The result has been severe diminishment of some media (hello newspapers and magazines) and certainly some massive monetary losses.So imagine this - in an age when video has become a huge media with a massive and growing audience a largely visual art form simply can’t figure out how to get on board. Someone pointed me in this direction this past week and I spent some time nosing around. Theoretically this art form is perfect to link into the YouTube generation. It’s got spectacle, story telling, incredibly talented performers and huge name recognition. And yet the videos I found were dull and uninspiring.
The culprit this time is Broadway. Think about it. The holy grail of the video world is great content. Broadway has content out the ears. Think of all the lame-o videos you’ve watched with second rate stories and third rate performers. Broadway’s promotional videos ought to blow them into the weeds.
But my quick and dirty search revealed exactly the opposite. Rather pedestrian videos that really felt like TV commercials and not especially compelling ones at that. They tried to go for the spectacle aspects but completely abandoned any sense of story telling. Clearly they assume you already know what the show is about and don’t have to sell it to you.
And that I think is a terrible mistake. Exactly how well Broadway is doing is a matter of conjecture. It’s always a high cost, high risk situation. So I would think that they’d take advantage of any opportunity to reach out to new audiences and their money.
Instead what I see is another old line media that is certain they’re just fine where they are, that everybody knows who they are and the “we’ve always done it” is just fine. That kind of complacency hasn’t worked out very well elsewhere in the media world.
No Old Girls Allowed
There’s a well known “secret” in the media world that doesn’t get nearly the discussion it should. A recent story out of New York City helps drag it back into the spotlight whether the powers that be like it or not.Sue Simmons, long time news anchor at WNBC, is getting cut loose by the station. Now news anchors get dropped periodically, even ones with track records almost 3 decades long. Sue Simmons has been working next to Chuck Scarborough for years. Simmons is a native of The City and is recognized by fans and critics as honest and a true original.
And that’s where the trouble begins. Why she is not being renewed by the station isn’t clear. Ratings for the 11 PM newscast which she does with Scarborough are a healthy #1. Both of the veteran news anchors are getting a little long in the tooth, they’re both 68. But Scarborough got a 3 year contract extension and Simmons is being shown the door.
In the end there’s only one reasonable explanation. She’s a woman “of a certain age”. Any woman on TV or in the movies can tell you that after a certain age the industry turns its back on you. Sooner for movie actresses than news anchors but it’s there never the less. If 68 is too old for Simmons why isn’t it for Scarborough? Easy. He’s a guy. Guys get distinguished as they get older. Women just get older.
It would be easy to just point the finger at the corporate types and sit back feeling smug. The problem is that we the media consumers buy into it. Our culture has a completely unhealthy fascination with youth. Both men and women can feel the impact of that foolishness but in the media the women pay a decidedly higher price. And it’s wrong. An intelligent, experienced authoritative voice should be valued and respected whether that voice is male or female. A skilled actor is a skilled actor at 30 or 70. Gender shouldn’t enter into it.
It’s time for us to demand the end of the media’s discrimination against older women. We can do that by closing all branches of the “No Girls Allowed” club in every aspect of our lives.
Call that the View From the Phlipside.
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